Greed

(NB... it's happening, isn't it? Just like I foretold... I've got a boyfriend, and I'm happy, and I'm not writing here so much. Bad Johanna! Must keep at it, cos I actually love splurging this venom out at you lot on a much more regular basis than I have been. At least 6 or 7 oh-so-inspired ideas for topics have risen in my head, half formed, and then the moment has passed cos I was too busy kissing or giggling or generally having fun (how vile, as dear Morrissey would say) and now they'll never see the light of day, and the world will never know. What a tragic loss for the world of 'art'! However, I am now awake at silly o'clock thanks to my dumb-ass curtains that are made of sheets, and so, you lucky, lucky people, I shall write.)

So... do you ever get days (or weeks, or months, or years) when it feels like ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT is food? I really hope so, cos I do. A lot. I know this is probably a tired subject for a girl to write about, but, well... this story is old, I know, but it goes on. (Wow, two Morrissey references in the first two paragraphs. Am I really 33, or just a 14 year old in a really bad wig?)

I try somewhat hard to eat properly. (I was going to write 'really,' but I was bought up to believe that it's a bad idea to tell outright lies.) Sometimes, however, I do try really hard, and then I lose weight and then, aside from the general angst and ennui that 21st Century living brings with it, I'm happy. The thing is, I actually enjoy eating healthily and once I get into it, it's honestly not a problem. Fruit? Yes! Vegetables? There's literally not one I don't like! (Unless chili is a vegetable, something I've yet to have the proper confirmation on). Berries and yoghurt for breakfast? Brilliant! All I ever drink is water (well, and gin and wine and jagermeister (not altogether, you understand), but hey ho) and so generally my meals are as healthy as you like.

But snacks. Ahhh, snacks. Those are my downfall. Cheese is private enemy number one. And to be honest, calling cheese a snack is a bit like calling Madonna some bird I heard about in the 80s once. When I'm in a cheese phase, I eat entire meals made of it. But I pretend it's still a snack so I can have my dinner as well. Brie and Port Salut and Applewood, oh my! And the slices have to be thick, and the crackers have to be laden with more salt than the dead sea.

See, salt... that is my downfall. I'll eat chocolate if I'm properly depressed or if someone's actually waving it in my face and insisting, but I'm not really that bothered about it. I don't like dark chocolate, and I hate any chocolate flavoured things... chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake, chocolate pudding... euch. Too rich. I'm not a fan. But show me some salt and I'll probably snort it and break your arm for some more.

Peanuts... pringles... pretzels... podgy, podgy Johanna. (Although that, I admit, was a slight bit of the old artistic licence for the sake of alliteration - pretzels, at least those yummy Penn State ones, I have recently discovered, and some of you may be interested in this, are practically no fat! Two Weight Watchers points per bag, which is better than one of those fakey Go Ahead bars which pretend to be good for you but aren't especially. And yet, gullible moron that I am, I continue to Go Ahead and eat the darn bars in a bid to give myself a surface level of feeling better about my evening gluttony; a surface level I dare not poke too hard for fear it will collapse. But back to the point in hand, they're almost as good as crisps, those pretzel things! Almost!)

Where does this greed come from? I wasn't being sarky when I said that sometimes all I think about is food. I may have literally just finished stuffing my face with whatever snack I had just fallen upon, and already I'm plotting my next move to the canteen or Pret to get the next thing, even though I'm so full it hurts a bit. What's it all about, Alfie?

It's especially hard when people lay delicious snacks out on a table for you and then you're expected to ignore them. I never understand this. It happened a lot when I was in the dark days of freelancing on various magazines, and it happens now at the job I have on Thursday mornings... a lovely, lovely lady buys biscuits (another weakness) and crisps and nuts, literally by the bucketload, and spreads them out for us all to eat every single week. And I swear to god, everyone else not only ignores them, but seems happy to do so. This used to happen at the magazines as well. It was like a competition to bring in the most delicious snack, followed by a further, secret competition to see who could ignore them the most convincingly. Whereas I, despite my best intentions, surrounded by such bounty, literally cannot think about anything else and find myself going to the printer or the toilet every 15 minutes so I can come back with handfuls of goodies. And then I feel sick, and then I feel fat, and then I feel ugly, and then I hate myself, and then I realise that food is the only one who will still be my friend when I'm as weak and disgusting as I am, so I go back for more.

A lot of it - as is the case for so many of my problems - is booze fuelled. Once I'm drunk, all cares about being thin and pretty and healthy and happy with myself fly out the window and are entirely replaced with a vampire-like need for salt and fat, a need which is seemingly never, ever sated.

Keen followers of my blog will remember that my last entry was all about how I've gone off the form of fun that has been my mainstay (ha ha, I wrote mainstain at first there, chuckle chuckle) for the past 18 years. And I'm still feeling pretty happy about that decision. But I slightly fear that the greed that fun always unleashed in me has merely been transferred to food and that in 6 months I'll weigh 22 stone and be begging someone to give me some insuffalatable diet suppressants to restore me to my former self.

Meantime, I'm gonna stop waffling. It's time for breakfast.

Failure

So, as keen followers of my Face Book page will have noted, I've failed in my new year's resolution. In truth, I actually only managed about two months out of the promised twelve. Most people have been very nice about it, although some have wagged their fingers at me good and proper. But I'm happy, so the tellings off haven't really mattered.

Would you believe me if I told you that this time is the best of all... that it's holding sunlight in my hand, that it's heaven come to call? (I can't claim those last few lines, they're from a beautiful song by a folk artist named David Ackles, called Love's Enough. Go look it up, you can thank me later.)

However, I'm not here to gush. I think you all know me better than that by now. Why look at the positives when I can rub my face up against some negatives?

I failed in my new year's resolution. And while I'm happier than I've been in years, I am also keenly aware that I look a bit foolish now, and that people are probably saying some unkind things about me, that I can't cope without a man and so on and so forth. (Although they're probably not, actually... as my DJ life partner and I like to comment, people probably aren't talking about you half as much as you fear they do for the simple reason that most of them couldn't care less about you and are much more concerned with their own piffling trifles.)

Still, the sting of failure is keen. AM I not able to cope without a man? You might remember, that was part of the reason I wanted a year off blokes in the first place... to prove to all the people who are forever telling me I'm rubbish at being single and desperate for a boyfriend and can't cope alone etc etc that those things aren't true. And you know what, despite my failure, I still don't believe them. Call it denial if you want. But my boat is sailing quite happily along the current of denial, and the sun is shining, and until it sinks, I'm gonna be happy. If it ain't broken, don't try to fix it, as the most wisdomous Will Smith once said. (Ok, so he probably didn't say it first. But he says it on my iPod with stunning regularity, and that's all that matters to me.) (And joking aside, I really don't think it is denial. I do cope without men. I just choose not to, quite often. So sue me.)

I have failed in other areas of my life as well. And I hate it. I really, really hate to fail. Failure stings me like lemon juice in my eye. It wakes me up at night. It whispers in my ear on some idle Tuesday when I'm shopping for shoes and not thinking about it at all, making me cringe bodily and whisper 'I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself' in a fevered furious pitch, so that fellow shoppers look at me like I've lost my mind. But who doesn't do that from time to time?

I guess my main failure has been my total lack of ability to get a job since I got made redundant from my last real one, back in... fuck... 2003, probably. That's a really long time ago. If someone had told me that day that I'd still not have had a proper job some 7 years later I would have laughed in their insolent face.

And ok, so I'm doing other things with my life now - I didn't have much choice when it became apparent that, for whatever reason: the financial crisis, magazines being closed, my own crippling and obvious inadequacies, you know, whatever... I was never going to get another full time sub-editing job and so would be better off looking elsewhere. And I'm very pleased I got into psychology. I love the research I'm doing at the moment. I love my office and my new friends. But I'm scared of what the future holds for me, because I don't honestly imagine anyone will ever want to employ me again. You leave anything long enough and it just becomes unimaginable, really. The thought of getting a phone call or a letter telling me I've been offered a job feels about as likely as me deciding I'm going to start eating meat again after 22 years of not doing so.

I'm really looking forward to not being a student any more. I miss money. I really miss it. I had it for a while, and oh Lord, does it make life easier. But I'm not nearly as hard up as I could be, so I should be thankful for that. But I'm also scared of the end of student life, which I've been back in for almost five years now, with another two or three to go. What if I can't get a job at uni in London? That would be very bad. What if I can't get a job anywhere? That would be even worse. Any more failure in this area and... well, I don't know what I'd do.

I've also failed to ever get any writing published, despite trying at that at least reasonably hard for a while. Although nowhere near hard enough with the book I wrote when I first got made redundant all those years ago, which I've still only sent to about six agents. Another failing! I did actually make a promise to myself earlier in the year that I'd start investigating poetry magazines and seeing about getting some poems published. Poems are much more manageable chunks than novels. So maybe that's something I'll do this week.

I don't really know how to bring this entry to a close. Another failure, no? Probably best to quit while I'm semi-ahead.

Oh yeah, I had some thoughts on the failure of my new year's resolution. Here they are:

1) If you want to make God laugh, hatch a plan.

2) To admit that you were wrong yesterday is only to acknowledge that you're wiser today.

So put that in your crackpipe and smoke it. I'm off to stalk the internet in the hopes that the newest and best bit of success in my life is around for me to talk to. Laters!

Radio Gaga

So, I was on the radio on Friday morning.

Every morning, I listen to Shaun Keaveney on 6 Music. I love him. I actually love him. It is a constant source of sadness to me that he's already shacked up and has a kid and so will never be mine. He plays Prince and Morrissey and hip hop! He loves Christmas and snow! He hates Lenny Kravitz and the Levellers! He and I are cut from the same cloth. Whenever I'm feeling depressed, mornings are always the hardest time of the day, but his radio show never fails to make me laugh and cheer me up by playing me some classic tune I'd forgotten that I love or some new diamond that I will come to love, and that's often what gets me out of bed in the morning and makes me carry on. I set my radio alarm for an hour and a half before I need to get up so I can listen to as much of the show as possible. Am I coming across obsessive? No? I'll have to try harder.

I've been mentioned on the show twice already. Once, he was doing a segment on what you were getting people for Christmas and I texted in to say I was getting the then-boyfriend a melodica (a weird instrument) and he read it out on air. The second time was only this January... he was asking for reasons to be cheerful (1, 2, 3) as of course everyone knows January is the worst time of year. I was very down having just ended it with the most recent ex two days before. However, I'd been promised a gift from my DJ life partner, so I texted in to say that despite all my woes, that was my reason to be cheerful. He didn't read the whole message out, but instead dedicated a Stone Roses song to me as my year had got off to such a bad start. I was so happy! (in between the blubbering tears, you understand) ;-)

So they do a segment on the show called My Morning Racket, where they wake up a listener with a noisy song (of the listener's choice) and talk to them about their day etc. On Wednesday, Shaun said that if you wanted to be on MMR (ha ha) you should get in contact, so I did - and about two hours later I had an email saying I'd be Friday's guest, which really surprised me as I assumed it would be a really long wait!

I suggested Head Like a Hole by Nine Inch Nails, Death on Two Legs by Queen or Open your Heart by Madonna - all songs that make me jump in the air.

The producer called me on Thursday afternoon and asked me lots of questions about where I live and what I would be getting up to do. I told him about uni and my PhD and stuff, and started thinking of witty and insightful things I could say to make Shaun (and the adoring hoardes of 6 Music listeners) fall in love with me. I was told I'd be called between at about 8.05 on Friday morning. The nerves started to take hold... I was going to talk to Shaun!!! My idol!! (aside from Prince, Morrissey or Madonna, of course...) (and I think I'd probably have an aneurysm of some sort if I actually got to talk to one of them...)

I woke up, hungover and a bit bleary, around 7.45 on Friday morning, which is quite late for me, but I'd had a late night. To my horror, I discovered I'd left my phone on silent (despite my good friend Polly telling me not too, lol - never go to bed drunk the night before a meeeeja appearance, blog-fans!), but although I'd had two text messages wishing me luck, there was no phone call. Phew-phers, as I used to say when I was a nipper.

Then began the wait for the phone call. It got to be 8.05. No call. Then 8.07... no call... by 8.10, I was sweating a little. Of course, being me, and feeling the need to live out my life in full via the medium of the internet, I had advertised my impending fame on Facebook and the bulletin board I post on daily. 8.15... no call... but instead, a weirdly unfunny segment featuring a pretend old man. I'm really not sure what that was about, but by 8.20 I'm realising that I've advertised my radio appearance to some 400 people altogether, plus my dad, and it looks like, as 8.30 dawns and the news starts, and Shaun tells us what's coming up in the next half hour and doesn't mention me, I've been forgotten! Oh, the shame!! The humiliation! Will people think I just dreamt the whole thing, like some poor deluded stalker? It got to 8.35 and I wanted to crawl under my duvet and die. I'm getting 4 texts a second from friends asking where I am and saying they've had to give up and go to work. The reggae, the reggae. :-(

Then, finally, just as I'd given up hope... the phone rings! It's a totally different producer... she tells me they're going to play the NIN track and then leaves me listening to the radio through my phone, with nervous butterflies crawling up from my stomach into my neck and threatening to choke me so that I can't speak. Suddenly, Shaun's voice is coming down my phone. MY PHONE! I'm going to have it bronzed!! He's saying it's time for My Morning Racket... that's me!

Shaun... "So, on the phone we have... a person... can you identify yourself please!"

Oh dear - it very quickly becomes apparent that he hasn't been given any of the notes on me and that we only have about 4 seconds instead of the usual 5 minutes or so. I tell him my name, gush and giggle a lot, and stupidly mention that I'm DJing at a party this weekend, which leads to a conversation about DJing, rather than about all my oh-so-clever psychology stuff... not that I'm thinking he knew about that anyway.

And then he asks me the question - the question I have dreamt of being asked live on air since I was a teenager listening to A-Ha records in my bedroom. No, not that question... he asks me which tune I'm going to play to make everyone dance.

WHY, WHY, WHY couldn't I have had some preparation for that??? There are a million answers I could have given which would have made me look cool and clever and interesting and generally brilliant. But I was blind-sided! I couldn't think straight! All thoughts of, say, Carolina Chocolate Box's version of Hit Em Up Style, or Somersault by Zero 7 and Dangermouse, or Anotherloverholeinoyhead by Prince, or Such Great Heights by the Postal Service, or even bloody Boom! Shake the Room flee from my teeny, tiny brane like rats from a sinking ship. I stutter over my words for a moment or two, and then go, 'erm, probably some Madonna,' in a most unconvincing manner.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Madonna with all my heart and anyone who doesn't dance to one of her tunes while Twisted Kitten are at the decks gets struck off the Christmas card list quick smart. But it's not even like I said one of her tunes!! (I could have said Jump! I could have said Nobody Knows Me! I could have said any number of actual things, but I didn't!) And the one flaw with Shaun is that he's not the biggest Madonna fan. In fact they sometimes do sketches about her and Jesus that are slightly on the mocking side, one could say. And my mad passionate love for Madonna really doesn't make me look pale and interesting, in the way I had hoped, now does it.

After that, he couldn't get me off the phone quick enough. But I did get to hear Nine Inch Nails, so it wasn't a total loss. I trembled with adrenaline for about an hour afterwards.

Oh Shaun... will you give me another chance?

Music saves my mortal soul

No 1. Queen

My first Queen album was, as I suspect it was for many people, Greatest Hits I, which I listened to in my bedroom in the house where I grew up. My earliest memories of Queen take me back to that bedroom and that time so potently. I was in the grip of my Alice in Wonderland phase and was trying to draw Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (as I think you'll find it's actually called, fact fans) chess pieces on my wall. Sorry, mum and dad... That bedroom was where I learnt to love music. I remember the day XFM started broadcasting as a pirate station... Melody Maker, my Bible, had told me about it... I had to stand in the middle of the room holding the aerial in the air to hear it, and I think my leaps in the air with delight at hearing the music I loved on the radio probably resulted in interference, but it still sounded perfect to me.

I bought News of the World on cassette with my first ever wage, which I earned doing a paper round. I bought a copy of Emily of New Moon by LM Montgomery, her of Anne of Green Gables fame, with that same payslip. Ten pounds went further in those days. (Yes, I know, that's a great story grandma.) I remember listening to Get Down, Make Love on my walkman in the damp and silent early mornings, Freddie's voice whispering into my ears the only thing I could hear. I went from house to house delivering papers, being appalled and embarrassed by the lyrics, and I was hooked. I remember getting Sheer Heart Attack on vinyl and feeling thrilled that Freddie and I wore the same nail varnish. I listened to The Lap of the Gods (part II, especially) again and again, feeling mesmerised by it and not being sure why.

And of course, as all Queen fans (at least the ones old enough) do, I remember the dreadful, dreadful that that Freddie came on the news and announced that he was dying. My brother and I cried in each others' arms, and two days later, on the morning of my 14th birthday, I was woken up by the news on my radio alarm that he was dead. My paper round took three times as long as it ever had that morning as I read every paper and cried all over it. Fortunately, no-one complained about the sogginess of the pages.

Queen are still my favourite band, and the one thing guaranteed to make me smile when I'm glum.

2. The Smiths

My brother got into the Smiths before I did, and I spent a couple of months thinking Morrissey was weird and hating them before the scales fell from my eyes and I became a life-long devotee. It was Sheila Take a Bow that did it. Throw your homework onto the fire - go out and find the one you love. Who can resist that? The label that the Smiths and Morrissey have as being maudlin and depressing is one I have never really understood. To me, they opened up a whole new world... a world that was romantic, witty, dramatic... a world that let me wallow in the overflowing river of my teenage angst, yes, but which also let me bite my thumb at my enemy and devote my heart to another and stand up for animal rights all in one go.

I was the classic Smiths obsessive. My friend and I spent months upon months playing a game of ever-increasing precision where we would take lines from Morrissey or Smiths songs and test the other on which song they came from. We started with whole lines from well known songs - "15 minutes with you, I wouldn't say no" (reel around the fountain, the Smiths eponymous first album) - and soon progressed onto a couple of words from a rare b-side - 'you don't agree' (Jack the Ripper, Morrissey b-side)... and always, we would get it right.

Morrissey was the first gig I went to. My brother was in the scrum to catch his shirt, and he let me have a piece of the bit he had managed to rip off for himself. It was red gauze. I pinned it to my wall and kissed it goodnight. Oh, Morrissey. Are you really sure you Will Never Marry? I think Meat is Murder too. We could Reel Around the Fountain together, and clap our hands at Margaret on the Guillotine. There is a Light (in my heart for you, Morrissey!) and it Never Goes Out.

3. Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails were only my favourite band for a little while, but it was a very intense love affair. I'm guessing I must have had my first actual kiss and my first actual disappointment, and I was ANGRY ANGRY ANGRY rather than romantic and fey and whimsical. I still listened to the Smiths on my up days, but mainly, it was all about Trent Reznor. I went to a Nine Inch Nails gig at Brixton Academy on my own and stood at the front screaming the words and believing that Trent could see inside my soul (which was black, obviously - while my head was like a hole).

I still listen to Nine Inch Nails now. I know I'm probably too old for that kind of nonsense, but nothing beats stomping around town listened to NIN and imagining my enemies crushed beneath my boots. Mwah ha ha ha.

4. Madonna

I know, that's a bit of a leap, right? I'm guessing not many people put Madonna and NIN next to each other, but there was a bit of a messy period at uni where I had a new favourite band every week, or so it seems (honourable mentions must go to Verve, as they were still much more poetically known back then, The Manic Street Preachers, who I loved so heartily for a while that I got a tattoo a bit like Richey's but a lot, lot worse (now covered up, thankfully), the Tindersticks, the Divine Comedy and Suede) and trying to catalogue them all is far too onerous a task. Madonna, on the other hand, has been something of a constant presence in my life ever since my ears started appreciating music. Of course, during my NIN days I probably would rather have died than admitted it, but I have always been entranced by Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone.

I remember some endless, rage-filled, stifling drive with my mum, dad and brother when I was a nipper and hearing Open Your Heart, my favourite early Madonna track, on the radio, and it seeming to make everything better. It's a very appropriately named song that, because it does open my heart. It makes me want to leap on top of things and scream with jubilation, the opening drumbeats and the 'look out!'. She was always in the news and everyone had an opinion about her, and she always held me in her thrall.

Skip forward probably 20 years and Confessions on a Dancefloor, which is the most perfect record ever made, was released. I bought it in Tescos at the weekly shop the day it came out and started listening to it in the car on the way home and knew my life would never be the same again now that this new piece of music had come into it. I don't think a week has gone by since without me listening to it at least once. It makes me laugh and cry and smile and feel triumphant and humble all at once. It's the best show I've ever seen in my life, and if anyone ever dares insult Madonna to my face, I will thump them.

5. Prince

Now, don't get me wrong. Prince has released A LOT of rubbish. I know this. But you could fill a day listening to amazing Prince tunes and never listen to the same song twice. Approx. I wrote a (dreadful, angsty) novel when I was 15 and couldn't decide whether to name it 'Late Night, Maudlin Street' after a Morrissey song or 'The Beautiful Ones' after a Prince song. I think Morrissey won in the end, but it was a close run battle.

(*NB - I read the oddest thing the ever day, which is weirdly appropriate given the above. Apparently Stephen Street (Smiths/Moz producer, for those who don't know) is a massive Prince fan, and the drums from Late Night, Maudlin Street are sampled from the bizarrely brilliant House Quake, one of Prince's sillier tunes (shut up, already... damn!). Can this be true? I long for it to be so!*)

Prince is a proper pop star. He's mad and weird and wrote songs with names like If I Was Your Girlfriend, which messed up my innocent little 14 year old brain. He thought he was god, and I think he might be right... think about it, it's the only thing that really makes sense. How else can one man write songs like that, sing like that, play all the instruments in the world like that, dance like that, look like that? Nothing else would be fair!


More to come another day, perhaps.

Update

So... recently, I have taken to making lists in my diary of things I could write blogs about. Partially cos ideas occur to me now and then. Partially cos I want to stay away from prattling on about boys. And partially cos it's recently been suggested to me that I should be approaching this a bit more like proper writing, rather than just messing around, and trying to improve it. All of these things are good, but I realised this morning that they'd kinda made me freeze, and not think of this as being fun, but instead feel like a situation that has some pressure attached. Which I really don't want, as I like writing in here and I want it to remain fun.

Hence, this entry is not going to be some great work of art (or even a minor league one, lol), but will instead be a random collection of some of the thoughts I have had lately. I still have list of proper writing topics, and I will come back to them... and it's good to know that some people think this is worthy of constructive criticism (and seriously, thanks to the wonderful man who proffered it, it is greatly appreciated)... but for now I just want to keep things ticking over with some nonsense.

I am now about seven weeks into my year without a boyfriend. Again, I just want to stress... I'm genuinely not so arrogant as to think I could be clicking my fingers and a boyfriend would just appear... I'd still not have a boyfriend even if I hadn't made this new year's resolution... but still, the resolution is reframing things for me, and making me think about all this love stuff a bit differently. Here are some things that have happened and some thoughts I have had since last writing.

Firstly, I was walking to the osteopath on Wednesday morning, and my thoughts were running this way and that way, being influenced by the songs on my iPod and the shops I was walking past and by each other, not really following any specific path. Sooner or later, as they inevitably do, my thoughts turned to new year and what a catastrophy the most recent one had been. This, via a complex path I won't bore you all with, lead to a happy memory of when the most recent boyfriend and I hadn't been together long... which in turn lead to feeling an intense, painful pang of nostalgia and sadness. I wallowed in that for a moment, and then dragged my thoughts away by their hair by reminding myself of some of the reasons why it had to end... and then a postwoman walked past me, who was wearing a particularly cool pair of trainers.

These trainers reminded me of a pair of Swear trainers I had had about 10 years ago. These trainers were brilliant. They were black, so could be worn with everything, but were really high, and all wonky looking, with a big black panel on the front pulled over to one side with an intricate pattern of elastic and hooks, and had a little water-filled panel on the toe. And they were SO comfortable, they were almost more comfortable than bare feet. AND because they were so tall, they meant I could see better at gigs and wear baggy trousers without them getting quite so soggy in the rain. I miss those trainers so much - I could never find a pair anything like their equal - and as I saw the postwoman's similar (but nowhere near as good) shoes, I was hit with an intense, painful pang of nostalgia and sadness.

The realisation that I miss having a boyfriend about as much as I miss a pair of old trainers was a good one. I don't mean to belittle boyfriends - those were awesome trainers, I miss them A LOT - but still. It did put things into perspective somewhat.

A second thought. Jealousy. It's a funny thing, isn't it? I always used to say I wasn't a jealous person, but I think I just don't want to be a jealous person... it's not the same thing, sadly. Generally, I don't mind if my boyfriends have close female friends, even if those friends are ex-girlfriends... I'm pretty good at handling that kind of thing as I'm generally not daft enough to go out with someone I don't trust. The only exception to this was one of the exes who often talked about the fact he wanted an open relationship... I HATED it when he got all snuggly with other girls. Hilariously, if you wanna see it that way, he never cheated on me, whereas the ex I trusted most and who is still my best friend cheated on me shitloads. Go figure. But I do, apparently, get jealous over other things.

Do you remember, a few blogs ago, I was talking about a holiday I had been invited on, but couldn't go to because of the preponderance of ex-boyfriends littering up the place? Well, that holiday happened, and now they're all back and writing about it on the internet. And the second most recent ex-boyfriend posted about the great fun and japes he had with the most recent ex-boyfriend, and Oh My God, how I don't like that AT ALL. What if they talked about me? What if they compared notes about what a terrible girlfriend I am and how glad they are to be shot of me? More importantly... what if they DIDN'T talk about me? Is it possible that they could be getting on with their lives just fine without me? Surely, surely not. Jesus, it's twisting my soul up thinking about it. I'm not sure why it's made me jealous, but it has... searing, red hot jealousy, raging up my throat into my face, and through my veins into my clenched fists.

There's no solution there except to rise above it, something I'm shockingly bad at, so instead I'll move on.

A third thing. There's a fella who has caught my eye recently. He's made me go a bit giggly and silly. I've been dreaming about him and exchanging the occasion bit of face book banter with him. The funny thing is I don't really know this guy at all... I've spoken to him maybe three times, and all of those were quite a few months ago. I think it's like when you're 13 and you're in love with Michael Jackson... hang on, that sounds all kinds of wrong, it's not very like that at all. ;-) It's just that Michael Jackson was the one I was in love with when I was 13. I seriously thought we were gonna get married... I had it all planned. I was going to win a Booker Prize for my first novel, and he'd be at the ceremony, and our eyes would meet while I was accepting the award, and the rest would be history. I wasn't to know, alright?? But anyway... the whole point of teenage girls fantastising over pop stars - insert your own here - (I could make some kind of smutty joke here, but I'll refrain) is that it's safe. Michael Jackson was never actually going to come out of the poster on my ceiling and turn my daydreams into a disappointing reality full of unreturned phonecalls and thoughtless birthday presents and going out partying while I was recovering from surgery. And I think that - the fact that this boy is safe, that I don't really know him, that I'm pretty unlikely to see him unless it's engineered - is what's going on here.

I consider that I have passed my first test... my friend knows this boy I'm blushing over better than I do and has been asking if she should put in a good word or arrange a night the two of us will accidentally be at and so on, and I've said no. Just as sleeping is so much better than being awake, daydreams are better than real life. And (not that I'm assuming I've got a chance, but still) my god, I'd look a fool if I broke my resolution seven weeks into the year after announcing it on here with such pomp and circumstance, eh?

*e2a* Heh... have just realised that if I put a link to this on FB, said boy might read it. Am I gonna still do so anyway? Dimella!!

In other news, I never finished putting the Christmas poems up here, did I? So here's a couple more...

My Favourite Place

Whenever I’m needing some comfort,
or some morsels to fill up my face,
if I want to feel warm and loved and safe,
I head for Millena and Michael’s place.

“Morning, Johanna,” barks Michael,
tatty pants, floppy hair, knowing grin.
Cooking breakfast to feed 5,000
and making me laugh til I spin.

Len and I put Friends on the telly
into a bottle of wine we descend.
Soft hair, warm skin, warm soul, soft heart –
my best and most beautiful friend.



For Kaye and Olly

A target-loving techie – tidy and (you could say) tall.
A chaotic whirl of laughing colour, who always has a ball.
How come you two work so gorgeously
when you shouldn’t work at all?

Thumping German techno versus dirty, broken beats.
Computer games, dated takeaways versus acrobatic feats.
How come, when you’re so different,
the glow between you is complete?

Generous, intelligent, cool and full of flair,
Beautiful and funny, original beyond compare.
Of course, you share so much, and that is why
you are the perfect pair.

An old poem

I'm "working" from home today. Which means I'm not getting a lot done, mainly since some of the things I need are still at uni. I was just trying to log onto the mindmap program I use, but of course I can't remember what username and password I put it as the computer at uni just remembers them. I searched my inbox to see if I had an email telling me what they were, and I didn't, but instead I found this poem. And I quite like it, so I thought I'd put it up on here.

Don't touch me


There's a garden that I used to play inside.
It's filled with waterfalls and apple trees,
the fruit is always ripe, the blossoms sing with bees.
We could linger through the silver night and hide
in soft hollows; we rolled around and giggled in the rain.

But now I'm locked outside the gates instead.
I can't remember where I hid the key.
I know I buried it, but for the life of me
I can't think where. I'm filled with dread
(tinged with relief) to think I won't find it again.

I stand on tippy-toes and try to get a glimpse
of what the grown-ups are all playing at in there.
I try to imitate, but all I do is stare
at them, at their magic tricks and acrobatics
that I once performed with ease in flower beds.

Have I been faking all along?
Was I ever really in there, or was it all a dream?
Did I ever truly mean my smiles and my screams?
But I remember every touch; I belonged –
or so I thought. But maybe it was only in my head.

Don't touch me. Don't touch me.
I don't know why.
I just know it makes me scared inside.

Maybe if I can relax, I can find my way back there.
So I whisper – scream: relax, relax, RELAX!
But it doesn't work. An ugly thought hijacks
my brain. Madonna, Christina; I just don't compare.
My lips are dry. My face is scratched.

But I know that's not the reason
(it's too easy to just blame the magazines,
because I know it's something deeper, more obsence)
for why I can't get back inside the summer season,
for why I can't (another lie) get too attached.

When will this be over? When will it end?
I AM in love; we talk and laugh for hours
even now we're locked away from all the flowers.
But maybe he is right and we are only friends.
But when I fall, he is the only one I trust to catch

me. But don't touch me. Please don't touch me.
I don't know why.
I only know I'm scared I'm dead inside.

Twelve Months Off

So, as I mentioned in the last blog, I think, or the one before, I've sworn off boys for a bit. In the hope, to continue with a theme, that less boys will = less whining. It is my actual new year's resolution... no boyfriends in 2010.

This is a slightly odd new year's resolution as it implies a certain amount of arrogance (which I do possess at times, I must confess) in assuming I shall have opportunities for boyfriends that I shall have to decline. This may, of course, not be the case. But I do seem to have a habit of picking boyfriends up without really trying, not unlike the way one can sometimes pick up a bit of toilet paper on the bottom of one's shoe as one exits a public bathroom, ruining both one's dignity and one's night (reason number one for new year's resolution, or NYR: excess bitterness).

Let me do a quick recap... my first true love began when I was 19, in my first year of uni. It was full-on, fireworks across the sky, scratch your name on my arm with a fountain pen type love. We stayed up all night scrambling our brains, writing stories together, and rolling around in kittenish glee. I don't think I've ever really got over how good that was. True, I broke up with him, but because he didn't really seem so interested in spending time with me any more. Or at least, that's how it looked then. Now that he's pretty much married to another girl from my year at uni, and they've got two kids and are all shiny Sunday supplement happy, while I'm alone with overgrown roots and no job, I wonder if maybe I couldn't have put up with it a bit more than I thought I could. I was young... I didn't realise that things don't stay perfect forever. I probably had pretty silly expectations. But who can tell from this far back?

So I stayed single for probably about 8 or 9 months after that, and then had a total rebound relationship which staggered on for two years, mainly because (I now perhaps unfairly think) that boy lived in Kent so we didn't see each other very often. I thought I was in love. We said we were in love. But looking back, I'm not so very sure. Certainly, as soon as he moved to London, we split up pretty quick sharpish.

Then a few months after that, there was the beautiful dreadlocked boy who promised much but said so little... then, after that, there was the second love of my life, who, to my eternal shame, I wrecked another relationship over and lived with for a while, and yet, despite our perfect meeting of the minds, still it didn't work (although he is my best friend, or one of them, now)... and then, before the second one was even really done, there was the third love of my life who was half completely perfect and half baffling terrible and who also hurt me so badly I think I'm gonna be limping from it forever. Then there was the most recent boy, who started out so promisingly and then turned out to be more interested in what I could give him (when he was awake enough to notice me, bless him) than in giving me anything back.

It's that phrase, you see... 'started out so promisingly...' They ALL started out so promisingly, I'm not a complete idiot, I wouldn't start going out with someone if I didn't, at some point, think it was a grand idea, a plan without flaws... this could be the one, this could be the one as Sean Hughes once said. But I've come to realise (staggeringly slowly, given that I'm meant to be a smart girl) that clearly, I cannot trust my instincts when it comes to men. I am a moron magnet! I'm not sure how I do it, but I do.

Hence... NYR. Reason number two: spend time alone, and try to hone my instincts so I can trust them better when or if I ever decide to use them again.

Reason number three: I really do quite like being single. There is a paradox that exists within my life, as I'm pretty damn lonely a lot of the time, but I'm almost always happy to be alone. I like reading my books and watching my telly and doing my exercise routine and listening to my radio in the mornings... and I like doing all those things without any interruptions. I like not having to meet other people's friends. I like deciding what I'm gonna cook for dinner and cooking it. I like all my clothes being in my house, rather than half of them here and half in some boy's stinky room on the other side of London. I like deciding what I am and am not gonna do at the weekend. Does it sound like I'm protesting too much? It probably does, and I'm not gonna deny that I like being in relationships too... but I've done that for a long time now. It's time for a change.

Reason number four: I'm really tired of crying and having my heart kicked around like a football. I'm just bored of it! And if I'm bored of crying over boys, christ alone knows how my poor friends must feel about me crying over boys. I think, for the first time in my life, I'm getting a bit scared of the whole thing, and I've never felt like that before. I've always been proud of my idiotic, blind trust in people, which carries on going despite the number of times I've been let down. But I think my simpleton's faith has taken too much of a beating, and is retreatin'. (Oooo, internal rhyme, see, that creative writing degree wasn't a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME after all) ;-)

A case in point: I recently had the chance to do a bit of part-time work as an online counsellor. I wanted to get that job so, so much, even though it meant working a weekend day every week. I am generally a person who guards her weekends against work very jealously. Sadly, said chance has been snatched away from me. I'm really gutted. So gutted that I cried A LOT over my supervisor this morning, which took me aback somewhat. And I realised, on the walk home just now, that part of the reason I wanted the job so much was that I felt like it was gonna keep me safe. Three months of working at weekends... I'd have no life. Which feels just about perfect right now.

I was talking to a friend about NYR the other day and he said that, like other kinds of detoxing, you can detox from the opposite sex for a little while, and feel a little benefit, but if you want to feel a big benefit, you've gotta do it for a long time. I see the logic in that. And I hope that he is right.

I'm not really feeling any benefits so far (one month in), despite putting my money where my mouth is. I have said no to stuff. I expected to feel a rush of pride and elation that I was sticking to my principles and all of that. Instead, I just feel a bit lonely and hollow, and a bit worried that once a year is up, I shall be old news, mutton dressed as lamb, on the shelf etc etc and no-one will be interested (question: would this really be the worst thing ever?). But maybe the rewards of celibacy take a while to kick in. I shall get Morrissey on the phone and ask him.

I'm thinking I probably shouldn't even kiss anyone, not really. I'm such a hopeless romantic, all it generally takes is a couple of snogs for me to think I'm in love. Again, who knows if I'll even be offered a kiss in the near future... but still... it's good to plan.

Of course, I shall probably make exactly the same mistake I always make in about (if past results are anything to go by) four or five months and be latched on to some new moron who isn't being very nice to me, and then I'll look QUITE the idiot, won't I? If I suddenly disappear from my blog again, you'll know what's happened. And then I can re-emerge, some months later, tear-stained and heart-battered, writing mournful poetry and swearing that I'll never do it again.