Beige

Trust me to factor in swimming, and get up an hour earlier after a bad cold night only to find that the Oasis isn't open till 10am. Too late to make work. I love the way I do this, as though going against the stream so much that it becomes counterproductive, and miss the obvious. I like having an extra hour of gift time like this. I am addicted to the knitting again and can finish my (newly-found favourite mug of) tea properly.

I didn't write for a while. I wasn't doing anything. I sat in a reclining leather chair for the best part of three days, knitting and wishing I had some Jay-Z to jar it. I made one and finished another quite dispicable Sunday Painting, looking for some excuse for this self-indulgence, looking for some mastery in this mess. Imagine, being free enough to make a bad painting! I actually completed my bag o pastimes this year, normally not finding the energy or want to do anything, when I have the time. This year, I ate the time, along with an awful lot of beige.

I was quite depressed to be in the Midlands this time. Normally I am upset and mourning the fact that I no longer fit, parts of me wishing I had a boyfriend and a mortgage and designs on a dog. Those parts were itching to get back to London this time. I felt an overwhelming sense that I was keeping my head down, as though not to let the past and its degradation in. The voices, the shapes, the dreams, the projections; I remembered his saying 'you'm not from ere' and felt I never even had been.

Weird. So separate from my past now. Kite string thin. How can this happen? Very odd. I'm not saddened I'm intrigued. Just to recognise that people are separate and free and differences are not a bad thing, just a thing. Eschew the food tastes, the conventions, the views, the hobbies. It did quite break my heart though to be questioned 'what's philosophy, then'.

Stollen - part two

It would be nice to be able to sleep for just four hours without feeling like I'm not just coming down with something but coming down with the mother of all things. I went to bed long past one waiting for the stollens, and woke before six, itchy and hot and cold and hungry. My eyes were going-abroad sore, early smarts and stress.

I'm sure I did fine in the summer, the odd night of five, four, three hours even, but the winter. I am most likely getting ill today. My nose is sneeezy my throat scratchy, and a long day ahead. I noticed the table isn't particularly perpendicular and amused myself with misreadings of articles called 'Choir' and 'I had 6,000 feet and survived'. Vogue is extolling the virtues of choirs?? How fucking cool am I! No, it's just very early for no reason and you're not quite with it yet love.

It's Christmas Eve tomorrow. I felt the last-minute panic on Oxford Street yesterday, overhearing shoppers talk about their plans in wool and pants. I haven't bought one gift. I nearly got one for her, but my conscience said no, I'm not getting dragged in this year, I'm very not! I came home and started the stollen ferment. We talked yesterday about the pleasure of cakes, I worried the receiver just sees straight through to the self indulgence. But surely that's a perfect gift, something reciprocal, a transaction contained within means.


Festive adjective

Of or relating to a festival: parties are held and festive food is served. Cheerful and jovially celebratory: the somber atmosphere has given way to a festive mood.

I think I'm doing that pretty well. I would say I have felt the most festive I have ever felt this year. Completely void of material drive, submerged in singing and providing multiple baked goods to friends, family and colleagues. I really shouldn't feel like I have failed? Cakes and paintings. Surely they are worthier than wrong objects? I just hope I don't feel too guilty come the 25th...

Toblerone

Christ, I'm so fucking pissed off. My hands are buzzing, I can't seem to find the keys and I want to break stuff. I'm pissed off that my non stick pan got fucked. I'm pissed off that I spent my day in rounds of exactly the same fucking questions and answers and moves and turns and people dodging and shouting shouting SHOUTING LATTE LATTE LATTE DO YOU WANTA BAG DO YOU WANT ME TO GRIND IT FOR YOU HOW ARE YOU MAKING IT FRUITY OR FUCKING CHOCOLATEY. FUCK.

Sorry I'll probably delete this sometime, maybe not. It's just my capacity for chronic repetition is really at its limits. I am not learni (...) I just cried and I didn't know that the impulse to throw and to cry came from the same place. I had a pain in my chest for no seconds really and now I'm tired again. I don't want to not learn and grow everyday. I don't have any excuses to cover up this with. I am by myself and here I am and I have a bad case of Londonitus. Not enough time to do everything. What is life going to show me tomorrow? I hope slightly more than today.

Ok I've got white tea and toblerone and I feel better. I apologise for swearing, it's so meaningless but I didn't mean anything so I guess it's perfect. Don't want to go to bed till I've had some success today? Some movement. What did life show me today? Er... It showed me the Piccadilly Shamen, who I have seen three times now. A 'weird' guy with rhymes and a completed Rubics cube, tapping a mad rhythm with his shiny shoes and spreading the love. He talks shit but once said 'you gotta be healthy to be wealthy' and I thought that was fair enough and supported my excessive sleep pattern.

No-one breaks their face, they can't react. The guy yesterday reading a book with 'penguin' in the title gave him a tip, it was just so cute. Today he misjudged his breaking-it-down, normally the act comes to an end at the next station but I don't think he was aware of such a large gap between Caledonia Rd and Kings Cross. It was awkward. I like him actually. What power and joy. I just want people to respond and glow, come together and have this massive train epiphany. Or something. And there's clapping.

In contrast, the woman calling the 'tea dance' yesterday was so bloody uptight. Seventeeth century dances are not rightly called those of Tea, and it was a most distressing start to the day. I don't want to see anyone with excess hair, grey white knotty plats and beards UGH for a very long time, and I feel I may even have an aversion to Cecil now. I left the concert at the interval, after our slight choir fail and unable to take and more weird folk, despite spotting a vaguely cute morris man. I lurked them in warm up, horrified by a heavy hairy in white doing a star jump. So ultimately wrong. So glad I didn't bring any foreign friends to witness such disgraceful Englishness.

Too tired to be cyclical and resolute, lets just hope I find something special in tomorrow. I should point out I don't hate my job. I just can't do the same thing for eight hours with honest glee.

Christmas Sandwich

Have you got any other questions for us, they asked eagerly somehow after one and a half hours. Aren't you going to ask me where I see myself in five years time? I mean, I almost nearly, very nearly very nearly verynearly said. Seriously. I was tired and it felt like hours and it was all about me and I nearly dug my own hole. Perhaps I already had. Perhaps they don't want to give me the indignity, I wondered. Perhaps I am already a fool. I certainly felt feeble and starving, this dry face and cracked lips not my own.

But I got through it, some words rang true and felt right, with only one maybe two times of 'shit, this is me in this room, now', and I suddenly feel like I'm outside of myself. Shorts. Watching people, things in slight slow motion, my brain assessing the situation way too objectively for the circumstance of reality. Three against one, and one with a slight clue at that.

Anyway. Singing! I didn't invite anyone as I thought it would be embarrassing and shit, but it turned out neither despite a fail on Ye Banks and Braes. I remembered a lot of words and occasionally did that hearing myself out loud thing, in context this time, going ooh I sound alright. It helped my ego to be stood next to the out-of-tune-alto for a few songs in rehearsal, until I had to shift because they really were putting me off. The audience looked disinterested, the whiskey man took on compere with unmet glee. She bought me a wine in the interval and we made friends, perhaps I will go back in January, I said, fancying a duet.

I hung around and chatted to the quirky soloist and his Guernsey knit, well I should say listened, trying to comb the room for people that might have something interesting to say. I watched a couple of folk virgins watch a woman breastfeeding with glazed eyes, it made me really sad. I ate my gluttonous Pret Christmas sandwich, wanted more out of my evening, wondered about the pub with the irritating birthday girl. I walked to the bus stop. I found the same type of people here that I found in wind band in 1993. Odd ones. I'm there too though.

Mince Pies

You'll be pleased to hear I made it six, nay six and a half good days. Yesterday there was sleep and painting(!) and almond pasting. Today went a bit wobbly according to the 5.30 start, never a good thing. The blip lasted a few hours, remedied by a good ol sing song in the House of Commons no less. London sometimes smacks me in the face, still. I watch it and go, no, London, you are not a miracle, and it goes BIG BEN WHITEHALL MEN WITH SILLY HATS ON HA. Westminster crabby. I'm glad I met someone else who thought the Friends box set was a good idea.

The House of Commons! Shall I take everything off, I asked the man at security, your coat will do, he said. I got an instant Polke-(new contemps)-esque photo pass, quite pleased with it but wondering whether my burgeoning tax bill is really going in the right places. I was directed by what must have been ten different jolly staff members, still not believing they let me in. I didn't really get it, the ceremony, all Malcolm Third Sector and rhetorical talk of nothingness. I drank two glasses of their wine, scooped shit loads of brandy-laced cream onto two of their mince pies, and looked out onto the THAMES. We sang a couple of songs, I wanted more. It reminded me of the town hall concerts, years of getting up at 8am on Saturdays in order to practice flute badly and wait for break time to eat penny sweets. All in order for the termly presentation of results, all made worth it by an audience.

We made chat further than fondues this time, the remove of the crowd made them normal. I slipped off for further browsing, watching some religious epistle in the House of Lords and something about water and flood prevention in the House of Commons. Hilary Benn is a MAN. I feel stupid. My day felt rescued, the interview looms. Make soup, chat twice, three times. Music. Slight prancing. Decisions? Difficult. Not doing any more thinking now but hoping I will sleep it out.

Saffron Buns

I had a good day! There was a moment around one o'clock where I was doing that staring into the void thing, the heater warming my cells into stasis, me not wanting to create an outfit or a face. As it happens my outfit came together by addition of a tshirt and worringly again I needed to put on lipstick to feel ready for things. A small amount of makeup, not a pasting, which is actually feeling quite nice. Herbs, whatever, it's just nice to touch my own face and for it to feel like a normal somebody's.

A good day! Again! The fifth in a row if I'm not mistaken. What has happened? I have begun to respect sleep more. I have had minimum eight hours per night for a week, around ten on ill Monday, eleven straight on Friday, causing me to wake up half way as though potentially finished, but it was 3.30am so absolutely loads left! Absolutely is my new word for yes. I like saying it and meaning it. I said it a lot yesterday at work. I was energised the whole way through, despite having a massive headache within 30mins of beginning the shift.

It was nice to meet the producer last night. It was nice (what's with all the nice I don't know, I'm thinking about saffron buns) that I researched and enjoyed a radio programme for my journalism course, then met the maker on my own sofa ten months later. I bloody love that. Such a warm feeling. We chatted tea dances, I felt myself becoming so predictable and talking like a script, but how fun would it be to think up ideas, journalistically, but not in terms of disposable words? Keeping the words and ideas separate. Lets just put that on the list of Things I am Never Actually Going to Get Round to Doing(!). Along with owning that many records. Such sadness.

So the day started with Strictly and breakfast in bed. Perfection. I reluctantly fixed my puncture and enjoyed going off-bus-route for the first time since October(terrible/boring excuse), popped into Timber, then to New Contemporaries and then a Lucia Party. I ate six or seven saffron buns and shrieked at a game. I bumped into them on the corner and it was (nice), sat in a big chair whilst I worried about my bike, then tried crudely to piece trends in the art. I saw work I have seen before by two people I know people of. That felt good, in the loop, real and existing, not things on this plateau of special that I'm not invited to anymore. I'm invited. I'm on it. I'm it. If I want. And I have another day off work to attack. Lets make it six.

Chips

I got really fired up today, a few times. The first was cappuccino chauffeur laughing when I said I didn't recognise a 'version' of a Scottish note. It looked old and too colourful to be real, the image of her as my conscience roared up, and I put myself on a platter for his laughs. He smirked into himself like a slug, couldn't let me in on his joke, and I wanted to smack him in the face.

Soon after, I dropped lids into milk and he played with me about my clumsiness. I found I wasn't playing and just wanted to break stuff. It passed, I thought it out, or perhaps in, I washed dishes anyhow. Later, I got displaced on milk after unfairly having too much to do, followed by shots coming through like they were being fired out of the machine. I moved and it moved, but again I wondered where. Did it leave me, or dig deep.

Despite this, I managed to have Two Good Days at Work. By this I mean I felt very energised and like I was doing a good job and doing very good chat, hearing myself speak for once and making sure I believed everything I was saying as always. I was waiting for the day to crash, but it didn't. I am putting it down to Enough Sleep. I have only been doing it for four nights but I must say I feel pretty good. That, or I needed to be ill, to just be slowed and recalibrated.

I am sad I had to miss dancing tonight. Finishing at 10.15 would have meant getting in at 11pm and not getting to bed till 12, then up again at 6.30. I hung around the market eating chips for an hour, my subconscious trying to persuade my conscious that dancing was a good idea. I ignored it and ate chips. The man in the chip shop laughed at me too. It didn't make me angry, it made me pathetic.

Why do I still go to the Rock and Sole Plaice(sp?) when they are so fricking rude every time. I only want half chips I said, WE DON'T DO HALF CHIPS he snapped, well give me half and I'll pay full, I told him tiredly. The man in front laughed at me. He didn't share the laughter and I was mad again. I was too hungry to think of throwing chips at him or anything like that. After remaking my misheard order, he gave me an 80p refund. I got half chips for under half price. I was not expecting that.

Stollen

I've spent the day in the kitchen like Women's Liberation never happened. Or maybe those women could never have pictured how knowing we'd get and the solace of the domestic would actually be quite nice. The pace of the stollen has fitted in quite nicely with my necessity for rest at this time. Mix yeast ferment, make marzipan and soak fruits in brandy, lie down, add ferment to dough mixture and leave to prove, a nap, mix fruits into dough, roll up with marzipan, leave to prove. Then I put a wash on and made a carbonara with the yellowest organic egg yolk, almost too yellow, and some chestnuts. Chestnuts are miraculous. They are everything you want an ingredient to be. I am sad when they disappear from the supermarket but their rarity makes then hallowed.

I am going start the orange knitting, watch the other half of the film. I am wallowing in my own time scale and actually quite like this. I am ill again. I had to come home early from the Warp party and miss Battles. Am I really guilty of burning the candle at both ends, as he put it, but merely with choir practice and ballroom dancing class? Not exactly hardcore, even nudged to the 5.30am starts. I was just refining my facebook photos and wondered if I had grown old suddenly this year, whether the experience shows on me. It reminds me that not everything is chronic and that's comforting.

I just shook icing sugar over the stollen and it was most pleasing. Andrew Whitley says it won't stay without the chemicals but I sometimes find him a bit of a martyr. Perhaps it is just my ills but sometimes I feel so satisfied by the smallest of acts, things that are so pleasurable, for now, it doesn't matter that they lead to nowhere. I finished 3 separate packets of past ingredients exactly in the course of the recipe, their amalgamation worthy and ringing so true. I am warmed. I love it when stuff fits, when things roll together quietly and make small sense.

I just met my postman properly. He knocked on the door, and yet again I am still in nightclothes in the afternoon. He decided I was a cynic, he a romantic, and bumbled through the pile of mail in the pouring rain. Grim weather, I commented, you see, he said. The hand that gave the rose that took the rain to make it grow. What? We started to laugh. You need to laugh, he exclaimed, look how you changed! I laughed at my laughing and hid behind the door. Part of me worried I would just cry. I agree, I need a romantic to break me, perhaps break my heart, not in a bad way, but break it into laughter. Some times the smallest things make the day worth it. And Whitley was wrong, the icing sugar is still there.

Choir

The weather is turning me agrophobic. My house is like a warren and I want to huddle, preferably with a boy in aran knits and a Muji-oh-eight dogtooth blanket but instead this mug of white tea and a warm laptop will do. I have been out the house for a mere 40 minutes in two days. I don't mind and actually quite like this. I don't want to go to choir. I don't want to sing with a bunch of folk nerds that I have nothing to say to because they are all weird and folky. I don't want to sit nodding off whilst the out of tune alto grates my ears and I wait for my turn and I'm thinking about tea with a capital T as she calls it like it's the most exciting thing on earth. Instead I want to sit here with twenty one of yesterdays birthday candles and look up philosophers and write an application to The School of Life.

I will most likely go. I have enjoyed working out that I don't like going. I have proved by example that I don't like the company, the style, the atmosphere and the structure. It comforts me that I disagree with something, something that I put in my own way as a choice, and my expectations were different to the outcome. It proves I can't predict everything an that I must try things out before I decide. I am glad I applied. It made me want to apply for more stuff, however flaky it feels. Don't ask and you won't get. Something is better than nothing. I have eaten too much cheese based dessert and I must get ready to leave now right now if I'm going...

postscript - 7th December

I ran to the bus stop because I wanted to run really badly, choir was excellent, we managed to talk about fondue sets for around five minutes, then I walked past a good few bus stops eating falafel. Sometimes you don't realise what you're wanting.

Cheesecake

Just what is it about melted butter and digestive biscuits, all squeaky and salty underneath the spoon, squashing down, hoping some crumbs are just not buttery enough to stay. I thought about the 64p packet cheesecakes we used to make, the ones I browse in Sainsbury's on darker days, or when I don't have 12-14 to feed. Times that by 1.333forever and it's 16-19. Starts sounding like some sort of privileged cake holiday.

I am a bit grumpy that I got up so late, and that the making of the cheesecake is keeping me in the house on birthday morning. But yesterday was so grim I sometimes find hibernation a fair reward. I left work at 5pm and got in past 8. I took five modes of transport. I wasn't thinking straight. I took my return overground journey for the pointless value of it, I got off at Euston in an impromptu (and fraudulent) attempt at railcard renewal, I got the bus to Angel for Waitrose in particular, a failed thought that bulk mozzarella was cheaper there.

I got on the next bus to Northumberland Park, confusing it not only with the Donna Summer song 'MacArthur Park', but also forgetting I don't live in Stoke Newington anymore. I changed to the final bus and had already made a fair dint in the digestives, I felt gross and tired and unable to be rescued. It took me a while to realise that I was supposed to go to bed, so with my eye on that I didn't apply for the job but I painted my nails and went into hibernation mode. It is very cold.

So here we are. A bright birthday day, 12pm, still a cheesecake to bake and a hospital appointment to be made and hopefully some daylight to be had. I think I was kidding myself that drawing on Hampstead Heath would be anything other than freezing. The romance can stay locked until it's quite a lot warmer than 4 degrees. I will treat myself to Le Pain Quotidien. Birthdays are weird.

T Dancing

I'm thinking again about whether there is a story in the tea dance 'circuit', as she put it. My (old) mate Jeff the other day was talking about how it was a shame that no-one is into it these days, I didn't spoil the idea by saying how Going Out now is just a euphemism for getting trashed. It wasn't even like he was trying to romanticise it; I asked him which was his favourite dance, he replied nonchalently, and I don't think it was to compensate for his bad knee. I think he probably just honestly thought 'dances' were a good way to meet women, have a feel about innocently and decide which one to go for. And forget your self in the war.

So potentially I could zip around London and go to around 4 different venues a week, appearing as The Serial Young One. I felt increasingly suspicious at the Opera House last Friday, like a gold digger. What must they think of me, there especially, amongst the sequined beehives and backless dresses, party attire unashamedly clinging-or-not to rolls of loose skin. I'm here for the dancing, with no hint of irony or postmodern trend, I'm here for me. I wonder grandly as the spins pass before me, pairs of feet making new pairs, whether this world could be reignited. A world when a double Scotch is naughty, tea is special, and biscuits are just a treat. I like your shoes, she said, I like your trousers, another. Hobbs and a jumble last Saturday, I replied, feeling fake even though I was so so true.

I balanced my cup and saucer awkwardly, feeling under my chair for something I didn't need. Clockwatching and waiting. Jeff seemed tense. We had a dance and he smiled. He seemed to buy the Scotch in celebration, I couldn't try it as I had lipstick on, but it smelled so good. James Bond's drink, he told me, try it! It carried on smelling amazing, creamy and warm, as I swigged tincture from my Sigg bottle. You were born in the wrong era, he informed me, I disappeared into the middle distance in agreement. I often wonder how I would be if I was born in the first half of the century. Getting on and being happy, I imagine, truth within my means, married to a local boy and living by good rules and healthy limitations. Little possessions and real passions.

A man asked me to dance that I wasn't expecting, it turned out to be the partner of trousers lady, I expected they had talked about me. Let's Face the Music and Dance, and we gossiped about the bouffant he'd nicknamed The Duchess, and I'd secretly plumped for Sequined Glamazon. The Cobalt Silver Foxes were missing from the quickstep, unable to do their sick jive to this beat. I span with lightness I didn't expect, pleased to hold conversation and keep up at the same time. My 33p trousers did me proud. I don't want it to be spoiled, I like being an undercover tea dancer...

Day off/ffo yaD

Woke up heavy with memories. God knows what was in that eight hours, but on the tipping point I was thinking about the newsagents on Hardman Street? I traced it back to the last time I was at his house, the last time I rode away at 7am on Monday the Second of March, en route to my class In London. I remembered sitting in that workshop feeling WOOSH, these worlds do not match. What the fuck is going to happen here. I glanced her nails, watched them play with a pen, idly and consciously at once. No word for that feeling then.

Facebook suggested a group headed up by his photo. Falling. There I was thinking I'd chaptered it off, and there's fb telling me we're linked on twenty eight accounts. No wonder the memories keep flashing up. Ever since I started the autogenic training actually. These flashes of, excuse me, why am I thinking about reading the Saturday paper in a pub in Parkgate, right now? Er? Is this really being productive? Or, oh, there's another one from the car boot sale at the Women's Hospital, deckchairs, five pounds for the two, he'll carry them home and I'm so glad. They'll rip and rot over the next three years. Then flashes flashes flashes of the kitchen in our house, the oven, me spending an inordinate amount of time in that fricking room, trying to create an income, a belief, something.

The mind is so interesting. So so interesting. We can try and aid it, but really we only have a hold of a minute of a percent of the show that it's running. I wonder about the section that holds these paused pictures, ready to be played if I put my pen to paper, fingers to keys, hands round a glass of something alcoholic. What truths are ready to be replayed, and for what reason, or any at all. I started a new, ish, book last week. I now have a red book, a blue book, a black (Mac)Book, and various on-the-go Asixers. Slightly multipolar you might think. Slightly Golden. I should read that book. I just don't particularly like the topic, only the concept.

I am reading two books! TWO! I can't possibly expect my writing to move unless I am an involved reader, and since the course I've given up the papers. I am not even pretending to read the books, I am actually doing it. I am picky about everything, I really don't like a lot of what is available, so why should I have expected to find all writers amazing? I like her language. I like the way she doesn't put in speech marks, flattening the characters and writer and reader into one. It's all words, only. I like his topics. I like reading a short book that has been somehow pre-approved by Penguin for it's successful brevity. I will think of cafe au lait whenever I remember it, memories of reading about memory.

He asked me what I wanted to write about. Again, I felt a falling and panic, again. Some days I'm just not set up with an answer. Some times I just want to stop on the street and scream I DON"T KNOW. I did better at his birthday meal, chatting with them, somehow finding formulas and ideas in strangers. The only difference was my confidence. I pictured a website of offerings, a fiction section, a non-fiction section, perhaps a new blog of kind-of reviews, critiques. I applied for 3 a-n writing bursaries, thinking they're not going to pick me, they don't want crafted writing, they want regurgitated second-hand opinion, trite-art style. Maybe I'm cynical. Maybe I'm not ready to take on reviewing, my writing stuck between lyrical and processed information.

I started trying to write something fictional after the jumble sale. I felt that I should start an index card box of emotional situations, things to tap into, tools for removed realities. It started off ok, but just didn't feel fiery. Perhaps the blog is a really extreme version of expression. It was interesting the way he thought something typed was open to change and adjustment, over and above the handwritten. And to me, it is something so ridiculously final, these fingers dancing over these letters, the process of thought out onto a keyboard. It is the handwritten, to me, that is fragile. A process that is now only a beginning, a style kept for journals, love letters, Post-it reminders, passive-aggressive tirades, humorous intervention. I don't know what I'm planning, but it's nice to have flickers of light.

Not Christmas cakes

I peeled off my shirt constrictingly, "Roaccutane" he snapped within seconds. Great. I watched him spell out my names in doctor capitals and made him evil, playing into the science hand. I mentioned something unconvincing about herbal remedies and he told me someone out there must say cornflakes cure it. I hated him. I fucking hated him. I tried not to cry, what's your name, I scolded, as though I wanted to report him to the hippy medicine council, don't you know it's not only your way, you know, don't you...?

So it started badly. I queued next to the pregnant women and changed my mind about the scan as I was about to take a ticket. I went to the pharmacy for more information and a dishy kind pharmacist gave me some, who knows if I'd have said yes if he was sharp. I felt lighter. All I wanted was the information, not some cynical snappy fuck who thinks the world revolves around them and their truths. Come on. I left with four boxes of remedy, maybe.

I have wanted to go to Le Pain Quotidien for ages, and I wasn't disappointed if a little ripped off. Expensive, that Daily Bread. Nice though, nice crunchy barley flakes on a raisin loaf, covered in praline spread, and a bowl of cafe au lait, completely indulgent and lovely. And a good book. I felt peaceful. I'm glad I decided to find the Heath. When I feel shit, birds make me happy. When I feel happy, birds make me ridiculous. I love kicking autumn leaves. An indulgent view of town, excited by the train station, geek.

Hampstead is Britflick perfect, Dalston at a distance now, felt like Berlin. I saw the edge for what it was, the loveliness too. I'm glad I don't live there anymore. I nearly passed out in Sainsbury's but my tendencies made me put all my shopping back, in reverse, before I escaped crazy. I was taken aback by how messy and exhausted I was, dropping bags and bits all over the place, scrambling for my travel card, a drycleaning ticket, a cheque. I ate soup on a bench and felt on stage. I don't know what to do with my weekend. A birthday here and there. An art thing here and there. People here and there. I want to dance till 4am but I can't see the energy happening. I will see how work goes tomorrow. I am my own expert, listen.

Wondering wondering whether he's remembering remembering the fifth of November?

A cloud. A sad cloud coming round, hovering all day, as a marker that swallows itself up from projection to reality, and I'm going to wake up in the morning and still be alive, and probably not even dreaming about it at all. Ah heaviness in my chest! Literal and not. Non-iversary, in minus years and imaginary. Weird marker.

I'm tired. Today was hard but I didn't get a chest infection which is excellent news! I am getting stronger. I toyed with the idea of getting a prescription all day, but preferred to try and become resistant and not dependent on drugs, and if all else fails there might be a cute paramedic this time, and no passed-out oaf.

I didn't go speed record dating. Instead I made a lentil and apricot soup and pittas from scratch. Yeast is amazing. I do have yeast burps and hope the old block of smelly stuff didn't nurture any unwanted friends. Maybe I will wake up in a rash that I have to call in sick for! I had two good food days, lunch was a put together chicken watercress salad, and I super enjoyed the dinner last night. I put almonds and molasses sugar in the crumble and it worked a treat. I also went a bit off piste with my soup, adding whole cumin seeds and potatoes and tinned tomatoes. I love it when stuff fits.

Hmmm. Heaviness. Again a diary filling with dancing days and train trips, but as for ambitions and someone to share them with, hmmm. It all looks so black and white right now. We're in the same world, but it slipped and he fell and I'm still here and he's not there, and oh, who is going to be there? Is there a replacement? Did I fail my one chance, kind of by mistake, without even trying? How hard can things be, should they be? I guess I'm saying that I'm taking the whole day with a lightness I didn't foresee, truely seeing the fragility and hilarity in the whole game of being.

Maybe I submit to Winter now

I just got super upset because I'm not committed enough to be satisfied and I'm not free enough to do what I absolutely want. I am in limbo. You are free, you are not committed, you have this lifestyle which is so coffee but when it comes to spontaneously booking a £4 opera ticket on Saturday, you can't do it because you are closing the shop till half 7. That's that. The end of it. Responsibility. Consequence. Result. Tough.

I had to call in sick for work at 5am on Monday. It made me so upset I cried after I put the phone down. It's not normal to call your boss at 5am and apologise for being ill and unslept and have them be nice to you. It made me upset because I didn't want to to be doing it, but I didn't have a choice, I was helpless. Similarly, I didn't have a choice with a closing shift on Saturday. I can be a version of spontaneous, free of the nine to five, days here and there, earlies and lates there and here, but ultimately we are all bound by our means. There has to be a line somewhere which says STOP. You can't afford this in time or money.

I was just doing my accounts. It made me so depressed. I got so carried away on Friday after the celebrity dancer spotting and makeup and Champagne and Quality Street that I spent £42 in Space NK that I really cannot Afford. Means. I am questioning mine. I am running this show to the penny and whilst that is admirable it's also scary. What are my true needs? If I always spend exactly what I have, with a buffer of three thousand pounds, what the hell does it say about me? Is the want grown from the means, or do the means wrap around the want, squeeze and meld it to size? If I ever earn a 'decent' wage, what sort of person will I be? Would I go to pilates and have massages and wear Isabel Marant and not finish my breakfast at Ottolenghi?

I am just waffling sadness because I am ill. I am limbo ill though. Fine enough in the body, but my lungs are just having this huge fight I can't help them with. I can't go into the fresh air as my throat will be attacked by shards and the lungs will weep. My back is aching. It's about this time I start to feel hugely sorry for myself, not well enough to enjoy being off work, not ill enough to forget myself. I was hugely interested in the two side of the brain thing. They are dealing with different parts of being me. I would like to find out more about it. How much do I control this now-yearly chest attack, bring it on myself, and how much is just the turning of the seasons.

Blogging at the party beacuse I don't know anyone here to Talk to

I am sad and eating Forrero Rochers at my own party. My friends have left and everyone here I have know a mere month. I played an hour of my iTunes secretly knowing it's time was the seventeenth of January two thousand and nine, in a kitchen which appreciated it and I thought I wanted more but in fact everyone was off the scale and crazy on it and it couldn't get better. I played the same songs in a room full of people with zero histories and it didn't make sense. It was stale ironic. It was old signs and older signifier.

I feel sad that he is two miles away. I feel incredibly sad about that, incredibly sad. Two miles away, a lifetime. Fuck off you didn't work and I displaced you without your consent, and now I'm two miles away and it could be 1500, same thing, zero care. But I just can't fucking shake it. What is this new life, so far it is fresh and new and non-historical, by default. It feels flimsy and unsupported and unplanned. I am pleasantly no-one; I am new and ready to be designed.

I am sad they couldn't come to the party, I was usurped. That fucking sucks. Someone else was down, someone else was ill, someones were in the mids. Quite glad I don't have an hour trawl to get home but I guess everyone will still fucking be here in four hours time (7am). Perhaps that is time to decide something. I knew he wouldn't come. I knew I'd be a floating weird thing. I am not solid enough to be sold to strangers right now. At all. I am not good value.

I was immensely happy today. They presented their celebrity and I watched in awe, smiling and incredulous. I was kind of weary that I didn't fit the demographic, I wasn't danced and I wasn't filmed and I wasn't tea-dance-for-BBC-fair. I watched as he skimmed a short lady over the floor, his frame towering her shrunkeness. It wouldn't fit if I danced with him. I was super sad. Are you a dancer, he asked, I want to be, I said. I wondered how serious I was about it. How far we carry our ambitions, if they are truly made or killed by professionalism. Doing/making. Faire. Being. Etre.

A new structure

I started today in a heavy clumsy mood, dropping and knocking stuff all over the place and spiting everything. I was on shots and in some sort of zone, if not the one, but I decided to try and mentally note down instances of interest, in order to keep me from screaming I'M SO FUCKING BORED I WANT TO THROW THIS HANDLE JUST TOWARDS THE BIT WHERE THE WALL AND THE FLOOR MEET BECAUSE I SIMPLY CANNOT COPE THIS HOUR THIS MINUTE THIS SECOND THIS MOMENT.

The guy from the Fast Show came in again. I forgot he was also Mr Weasley. He looked twinkly and it was early so he wasn't funny or odd but you got the feeling he was keeping a low profile. I wanted to start my cup signings there and then, again, but I just couldn't embarrass myself to start it. I thought it through and handed him his black and filter with a dash, is that enough milk in there for you, yes thanks. Then pm Ian Kelsey yuck came in, and was doing those 'you know you want it' eyes beyond my own customer, so I talked extra friendly and averted the eyes and wanted to ask him to sign a cup for my mum. The fucker. Yuck.

Later I joked with the owner's daughter's boyfriend in the fridge, I bet you come in here just for a sneaky break don't you, why the hell did you just say that, I don't bloody know, I'm just spinny and droppy and woozy, not really in it today, and I'm trying to create some instances to report later, or something. I enjoyed the universe moment in the fridge, the bit where things feel smaller and the world is do able, you just need to work out what it is you want to do. My caramel macchiato came in later, and I just was so dull and flattened I didn't sparkle and I didn't care. There was some movement of qi however, reminding me I was alive, just.

Not much else occurred at all. I kind of admired his bravery for popping in, but took it as a lesson to know when all is done, when to give in or up. I thought perhaps I'd got the wrong idea altogether? I got my hair cut and it was fine, not world changing like it used to be. I went to lindy hop. It was fucking amazing. All I want is a man who wants to dance. Rhythm. Style. It. I was super glad I went but now I'm so tired I can't think of anything better to say that first person reporting. I wanted to start posting more. I have a rather amazing few days planned. I shall reflect on them soon. Next week I start my assault on the world. Contacting people, having ideas and being New. November.

Fresh yeast beast

I just made the most amazing loaves. They are crispy on their metal-fold edges, and soft and slightly salty. I am distinctly not hungry, but I could probably eat a half loaf in minutes. Salty butter. What the hell am I, freshly baked bread and Black Sabbath box set, what the hell? I like these splits.

I was thinking a lot lately about how oblique the blog has become, like I am creating an own privacy by being almost non-referential. It's quite an interesting tact really, but I do want to actually start writing about things, rather than hinting at maybes. I finished work early at 1.15pm yesterday, and I was sharing my plans of swims and art, that sounds productive he said, I challenged there wasn't any product, so was it strictly true? When I chatted shit for 3 1/2 hours at the party and barely remember any of it, was anything produced, where there any results?

I am back after a sleep. There is an item about diaries on Woman's Hour, right now there's arguing. I am having a tear between the personal and the private, reporting and reflecting, are they mutually exclusive, are they the same... Either way, I want to start writing and reading for the good of Art. I think this shouldn't be on here. The internet is for reporting, journals are for reflecting. A place for both perhaps. When she said last week about writing for art reasons I was proud and sceretly knew I probably couldn't do it. I'd find my Person getting in the way, perhaps, or perhaps my Person would add what set it apart? You won't know until you try.

I have once again been smashing my diary full of fun, really good fun, gigs and dances and dancing and restaurant meals and drinks and art and dinners and parties, mini train trips, bread making, all sorts. I am being productive, with no product. I am feeling good at the time, having a panic the other times. Laura Gibson, Fiery Furnaces, Kings of Convenience, Max Richter, two tea dances, two lindy hops, noodles and Mexican, the after party, the rad party, our halloween party, St Alban's abbey cafe, two lots of bread, three dinners and one secret restaurant, the men's suits and Matthew 'heart' Brannon. Lots of fun stuff. Still particularly chronic.

We were watching Groundhog Day last night. I couldn't sit still, I was in between and the itchy repetetiveness gets me. But as the film progresses, he finds solace in the chronic release, making a difference in each relived day. It made me want to wallow in it a little bit, and just make a good day everyday. The product will perhaps occur naturally.

A late, jumbled one

I can't sleep, I want cheese. Instead of just writing about it and keeping my eyes oscillating perhaps I will just go and eat some cheese and have a cup of tea. There are some people in the kitchen. I don't know how I feel about that. I had a most excellent day off. I made bread and did yoga and put dates in my diary and rang the General Optical Council. I had a 21 day aged steak and improvised a sauce with white wine and cream and mushrooms and it was fucking amazing. I feel so satisified by meat and fish, I feel like I am eating something I need, that I didn't know I wanted

I'm having that feeling again where I can't go to bed till I've decided something, put weight on my day, made a truth. It reminded me of those times where I would just attempt to sleep in his cold damp mildly dirty bed and have to get up, and write out all these thoughts whooshing through my head. There was no-one to listen, I had to scrawl. I threw the paper away almost immediately of course, it made no sense and was damaging to my day self, crazy lines of circular ideas.

I have memories on days off. Like my brain is trying to process things. I drank rooibos and it was 2004. I had given up sugar in my tea the previous month, I had given up caffeine for something to do. I was making chocolate victoria sponges and freezing them in halves. I was going climbing and didn't yet like bananas. I was dancing in The Cooler spying a fashion boy and one in a yellow tshirt which haunted me last or last last year. It was 2004.

I never look back at memories and feel amazed by my results. I wonder if that is pessimism, or just waiting for something to happen. I read the channel 4 talent thing, and I was inspired by taking a new path. What is it that sparks you, are experiences ever real or are the relationships you form around them the true drive? If everyone was in a vacuum, would anything else exist, would creativity spark.

I'm tired but I'm not tired. I feel lazy and indulgent on my days off, having an (awful) memory of the art-guilt kind, what a fucking waste of time that was. I layer stuff up so that jumping into the fear is made more and more difficult, and plain tasks like bread making and hand washing are so much more instant and gratifying. They require no commitment. I didn't realise until I typed it, but I really do like the freedom of Monmouth. We barely need each other, but we are integral. I could quit at a week's notice, I'd be instantly replaceable, near-instantly forgotten. A lost cog. But at the same time it is my drive and focus and stamina. Perhaps I find it too comforting, am treated too well, and give myself a false sense of future.

Oh I've broken my four paragraph rule. Whatever. I just need to keep thinking about what The Voice said, that the ideas and action will not come by the way. They take time and effort, and I must take myself into that zone, somehow. I can't see how! I'm not sure how much I already know, how much is left to learn before I can start, how I can work through it. I think I need a tea.

Get back to it please

I am spending an awful lot of my time communicating. I spent so long separated and apart from connecting with any amount of people, that now I have people around me to spark with, I am ignited. It has taken a year. I feel interesting and interested. I had a memory about what would have happened, had the internship been successful last year. What group would I be moving in, who would I know, who would I be? I felt glad that it fell through, glad to know the people and circle I am in. A scary alternative thought.

So I spent the first part of my Sunday just chatting on the internet. It never feels like the best use of time, typing things that are faster said. But I like typing, and I like the process my brain uses to put thoughts into words, slower, when writing, and more like I'm developing language rather than just chatting shit. You can (try and) say trivial things in a heavy(er) way. Or something. Maybe I am just honestly still enthralled by how the internet works, so much more thrilling than the phone, though I would of course prefer a real person. I hate the phone.

We were talking about how you talk about yourself. I had so many 'what I do' conversations lately that I started to play around with how I phrased it, and how I felt about it. I realised I feel different when I know(?) that the person I am speaking to will 'appreciate' my story. Or I rank myself on their scale of success/importance, and play it up/down accordingly. I still don't know what modest means. There's a trapdoor in my brain for those, along with secular and conspicuous. However many times I look them up, their meanings do not imprint.

How do I truely feel about what I'm doing now? And was I honest when she asked me my dreams and I didn't know? How layered am I, I didn't realise so much, I thought I was empty, but the peaks and the troughs negate emptiness. I am enjoying work a lot at the moment. I am enjoying the communication, the passing of information, the subtleties and dalliances, the eyes and the shuns. When I am tired I hate it, and the pleasantry is chronic and stamina-building-torture that part of me endures and and enjoys.

I just finished my favourite meal. It's not official, it's not Italian, just cooked tomatoes until they burst drowned in an amount of cream a little bit more naughty than Nigel would approve. I wish I had meringue for dessert. I'm trying to focus on the Eight of Wands, and have a good Sunday, doing things at slightly the wrong time with slightly more energy than I need. I am taking myself off for some art, to collect my bag, roll around unplanned for a while. And try and enjoy it.

There may be so many ideas floating around at the same time that you will feel overwhelmed by the choices, but regard them as resources to help you make a decision.

Next door are having a impromptu jam session right next to my room. Bongos, banging metal, a pile o shit rhythms and a mega fucking racket, faster and faster, louder and louder, are you frigging joking? And then silence, time for me to listen to the other next door doing a bit of drilling and power sawing, and to look over at my very burnt cake, and try and imagine myself as an inspiringly light Holly Golightly character who has tasseled earplugs and wakes up looking glorious after no sleep and everything's fab-u-lous.

BANG BANG DUSH DUSH SHUT THE FUCK UP. I was going to go to bed at 10.30, after sitting down nicely with Nigel on the sofa, relaxing, loving the bit where he likes the meringue a bit too much, a bit of camera play. I enjoyed the brief chat we had at Lantana yesterday about the cookbook. I wondered and fancied about it a little...SORRY I CAN'T FUCKING THINK BECAUSE THE BONGOS...

It's about an hour later, I have had a vodka and lemonade to stave off the bongos. Today was a success in that I finished a few tasks, semi-permanently fixed my wheel, had a really insightful chat that I wasn't expecting, where I realised I didn't really have that much to say and I really should start thinking. Describe my work, who knows. It made me want to remake things I finished with, starting on repeat where I left off. We sat on the bench and it sounded like a script.

v. Spin Out

I invented a verb today - v. spin out; to become slightly detached from the world, a feeling of unraveling, a peeling of facade to reveal reality, inducing panic, mild hysteria, depression, weariness and exhaustion. I invented it, and I want to put it in the dictionary. It makes me feel better to label this moment of 'shit, this is me in the world, now, going wrong. And it's ok, because I've noticed it, and now I recognise it apart from itself, so I feel safe.

I said a weird thing today, about his problems being universal. I don't know if it meant something or nothing, or if I even meant it. I would love to be intelligent enough to support my thoughts sometimes. I spent a time asking people to give me facts, realising I didn't have any to offer, my brain being so current and fuzzy and now, it can't be of any other use. What really did help today was people. When one is spinning, it makes sense to grab hold of someone. it's not personal, it's human. It's, share my experiences, make me feel like I'm not alone. One of the internet's plus points I'd say; you got a problem? Well so does the frigging rest of the world.

It really helped to talk it out with him, and I enjoyed his enquiry. At first defensive, I slowly peeled back my guard and told things I wasn't sure I believe in or against. I tested the thoughts out loud. I miss her, she was so helpfully selfless. I unburdened myself today by candidly sharing my woe, trying to concentrate on it's transience, and my beauty. He looked hot today. I didn't venture. I didn't need it. I was focused and calm, and trying to repair. It helps to talk it out with a distance, those too close can empathise too much, and this can sometimes be counterproductive.

I knew passive aggressive had a harder meaning that just 'do the dishes' nasty notes. I'm pleased that's what it meant, and I guess he was completely unaware of his actions. I guess I thought a lot of him today, and perhaps I was just wanting to finalise this chapter by indulging my pain. Yet another customer looked like her today, and we scrutinised each other with mismatched intentions. The past will catch up with my present, yet again and again, and I shouldn't be fearful of my pain. I should ride the beauty out and bask in the knock-on attention. And Heather, if you're there, please pop into the shop soon and pay with a card so I know it's you and I might accidentally throw a long black in your face. Forget the passive I'll just go aggressive.

Sliding doors moment

I was talking to him a few weeks ago, trying to explain how I can sometimes consciously feel the pull and power of going this way, rather than that. I pick up .5mph as I trust in my intentions and decisions. And it feels so fine. I was at Holborn station, 5 steps from the barrier, and if I'd have beeped through I wouldn't have change my mind and come back. Instead I checked my phone, and trawled to Dalston on the bus for a post pick-up. My momentum fell apart when no-one answered the door; I arrived home two hours after I left, instead of 45mins. The mohitos were too late for me. I planned a Wednes Day.

I hate it when I feel like I've slipped down the gap of a decision. Had I arrived home at 9.15 I most likely would have popped to mohito hour on the back of swing dancing. But after mail fail I just felt too tired and flat to feature at the party. I'm already feeling a pull in house dynamics, I mean obviously. 'Hibernate' was default mode this year, a mere listen out would clear the coast for an underwear-clad toilet trip. Now I am on guard. I have that school trip feeling, where you do not yet know this group to which you now belong, an uneasiness. A strangeness. Surrounded by so much potential stimulation, at what point do you retire? When is the potential lost, when is me time?

It clearly has something to do with growing up surrounded by people, or not. I wasn't, it was me versus the adults, play time restricted to outside the house, in daylight hours. I suffer a kind of fear at having people so close, I sometimes don't know if I want them, or I want alone time, or I'm too layered to have a First Conversation, what-do-you-do's and the like. True small talk with people I don't yet know enough to complain about work, or the ten thousand hours thing, or the fact that I'm still, even now, screwed over this whole ridiculous life change, wondering the extent of Google Logistics' revelations.

Today at work was ok. The chronic boredom tired me out before I got chance to enjoy it. I miss my bike. I enjoyed my outfit. I enjoyed the dancing and vow that it is very sociable and not at all sexual and they are younger and it was a lot of fun, and perhaps I will make friends with Rosamund Pike one day. I just did feel a little desperate, scanning this room, holding hands with strangers and judging them in steps. I am jealous of him. I am wondering about my mode to move on. She asked me what I was thinking at work, to get through the chronic action, and I hesitated. The truth is I am mulling a lot of stuff over in my head, over and over, and hopefully soon I will sit down seriously, with a calm mind and light heart, and see some way of moving actively forward. I want to feel that power and satisfaction of knowing I'm going the right way, even if not knowing exactly where.

First Sunday Breakfast

I am sitting at my new Breakfast Bar, looking at my objects in the Open Plan Storage, contemplating my new Clothes Rail and Loft Window, and wondering how to pace my spendage around the Mezzanine Floor. All of these late cliches, was he right when he said they're only cliches because they're true, finally, and thinking how a want satisfied is truly pleasing. All these silly 80s continental modes that were the dream are now here. It reminded me how I thought Ikea vase twigs were cool in 1997, jealous of her mum wanting them for Christmas, and now my mum has the gross things in miniature next to the fireplace. I am tapping into my 'what won't my parents let me have, I'm having it' place. It's 1994 and Clarissa is so cool.

I had a really good day on Friday, despite a late non-breakfast and an allergied head. I reclaimed my computer yesterday, so the wave was lost and now I'm floating again. Bobbing, (very excited by dairy apples). It was this fear that, you know, whatever accolade you put on a life-change, you're still you when you get there. And that being a most fearful problem. All these ideals, imaginings, projections, I must get the perfect 'shabby chic' chester drawers (sic), but where does it end? Like these people who are always doing up their houses, filling them with Ikea crap, reinventing, objects as goals. They will always be their poor unfortunate apres-garde s(h)elves.

I have grown myself a fear of change and the future. I told her in August that my plans were literally into next week, and I wasn't lying. Now, my visions are further, my plans fortnightly. I'm looking through my diary and the only skeleton is tea dances and medical appointments. It saddens me greatly. But considering only a few months ago the diary was scrapped, the book of plans shot, the future combusted, dissolved, exploded, blotted out, I really cannot give myself an instant-fix hard time. I must learn ways to relax and realign, and think. I want to think. I am not apathetic anymore and this is amazing.

I told the eighty year old man in shiny shoes and tails that I feel too old to learn anything new. I felt utterly ridiculous as soon as I'd said it, knew it was one of those moments where you shoot out of yourself and go, did you just hear that, what she said, my god, learn right there will you. Something sharply bookmarks that moment so you'll remember the feeling that it made, bottle the impulse. Did you just hear that, you made your own lesson in an instant. It felt good. I nervously danced around, not knowing where to look, what he was thinking, if his wife had died, how polyester felt a bit yucky under hand, wondering who was watching me and how I must have appeared. I don't know what to do, I said; pretend you've just had a dry martini, he told me. He skipped about and I awkwardly tried to copy, secretly knowing I could do it even though right now it didn't seem that way.

Difficulities

I'm sitting down to apply for this internship, and there's a pixie sitting on my shoulder going, why are you bothering, really, I mean come on, it's not going to happen, so why. Think of all the other things, all the other things, where you've typed yourself into a self pitying hole, dodging the gap between modesty and radical difference, trying to paste yourself into a place where only you will do, when you don't quite believe it, and being too different will ensure a fail.

It's that old gap between being different and special enough to get chosen in the first place, and being subtle and cool enough to fit in with that which already exists. I don't know why applying for stuff fills me with such dread. I suppose my lack of confidence plays down any positive attributes. I am jealous of them. I am jealous of people getting on, doing things, me watching from the sidelines as everything whizzes past, confused, my head whirring and looking for explanation, how did I get here? How did I land up on the side of the road, watching the race?

Actually, this morning, I suddenly thought, don't be so hard on yourself. You know, the way things went, you really were just car crash fodder. You left a degree with no training, no answers, not even the beginning of questions. You it difficult fighting for art admin jobs below you, concurrently losing skills for said jobs as the years went on. It's been 4 years and I haven't done anything. I am amazing at customer service. I can cater for 40. But, apart from that, I let everything else slide. I haven't played the flute for nine years. I haven't made any art in five years. Things that were strings are now just souvenirs.

At the same time, I must be careful not to dismiss things I do know. I do have a knowledge basis, it just is very stale and rusty. I should dust it off, and I intend to, but sometimes I feel so fallen that I just can't see over the wall. It's dusty and chalky and smooth and there are no holds and I cannot get up there, no way. There are lights, but they only come at good times. I don't want to send this application off half heartedly, so I'll leave it now. I need to just wade through this stupid half time and know that it isn't too far between here and there. And I am very prepared for the effort invloved.

Extremely exhausted

I have just finished my dinner, and I'm not satisfied. I have been eating monstrously for over a week, waiting for the hormones to kick in and sort out, and I'm still waiting. Nothing is enough. I can eat veggies, I want chocolate. I can drink juice, I want cake. The body is knotted as it waits, we're waiting, getting fatter day by day on swollen stomach and excess consumption. Right now I have just eaten a dinner of (soya) peas and carrots stir fry, it was good, but something is still missing.

Stress arms are back. Heavy tenseness. Today was hard. I was so insanely bored, having many of those 'shit, this is me, in my life, now' moments. They drive me nuts. It was just this waiting for something to do. I looked at the clock at 12.30 yesterday, 6 hours to go, and I didn't even want to sob, I just wanted to wail like a banshee. I had a slight 'this isn't what it's all about, right', moment today. Like I saw myself decaying and wanted more.

I had a conversation with The Voice today. It made me 2 minutes late off my break. I am loving people. Imagine, me, loving people. I love it when people show me how amazing things can be, it's like I feed off their energy and drive, I just bathe in it. He emphatically said studying fine art was the best time in his life, I stared at his shoes a few times and believed him. They didn't really match his outfit, a reddish tone to the yellowish tweed, but in that way they did match. I wondered when would be my most exciting time?

I believed it when I said I was using the next months to sort myself and try and get things moving. I'm worrying I won't have ideas, I said. He told me to think of one a day, If you don't actively pursue them, how can you expect them to come? I think I put pressure on them, these Genius Moments, set them apart from life and made them impossible. What would happen if I had an idea, right NOW? The worrying thing is that I am out of practice, but this shouldn't stop me from trying. Good luck with the creative process, he wished me. And it didn't seem so outrageous.

Blueberries, maybe I like them now

I love smacking the last bunch of blueberries into the last dregs of Greek yogurt, 10% fat, straight into to bottom of the pot. I love fishing for them with a tea spoon, not quite enough room to fit on the surface comfortably, so they bunch up in clumps. Eat them fast like a contest, popping in between the creamy, always 10%, smoothness. Is there anything more sensual to eat than Greek yogurt? Velvety, creamy, tangy addictive.

I am reveling in the last few days of a lonesome house. Prancing round the kitchen in a tiny nightie making fake quick-steps to Singing in the Rain. Scoffing blueberries grossly. What else is there to do? I'm not going to miss the lonesomeness. It's been rather paralysing. She said how different it was, that in a big house, people will knock on and check you're ok. I was ill numerous times this year, and I struggled through without painkillers or soup or caramel digestives, because no one in London cared.

He said how easy it would be to double-and-more my friendship group in an evening. I am enjoying filling my phone with new numbers, putting a rather more serious dent into that seven million, collecting people. I should try, I have a lot to think, or a lot more space to think, I need to create my new self, one which continues to do things that can relate to other people. basically continues to live. I stopped living in Liverpool. There was no-one to compare anything with, share anything with, so I stopped things. It sounds overarched but I'm being serious. Even now I get excited when I share something with someone, learn from someone else. I spent so long in a vacuum I thought I was the odd one out, my interest too odd, my loves not quite right, my eye, dying.

So I'm moving into this shared space. I have already made a commitment to myself, with lack of contract, that I have to shape the time there into my own worth. I am paying for space to be creative in, have ideas in, learn, do, make. I will give this a really good go, and if I don't have any ideas or get anything happening by the new year, then I will have to take a serious look at myself and really sign myself off to something boring and staid, because, well, that might be it. But obviously I have this secret something, which brought me down here in the first place, that says there is so much more than running an almost-imaginary cafe, baking cakes at top speed for £7 an hour, teaching kids how to make windmills, applying for arts council funding, being around pretenders. Now is the time I can make a difference, re-place myself, and let myself go.

post humous post

I don't know why but all of a sudden I've started to feel like I have more choices than I could ever picture before. I knew I was free, but I never felt it. The universe was tying me down, holding me down, strapped. I crawled underneath a low laid cargo net scratching my hair and my knees, my palms pacing. This is your limit it said, this is as high as you can ever go, not even standing, scrabbling along under this level of lowness.

We were talking about the year that shaped you, the year that things happened that years later, you stand back from and feel affinity with, still feel excited by. I felt excited about 1988, when I realised there were other beings than myself, other places that home, and respect, humour and cleverness existed. I sat back and felt proud that now was one of those years. A negative at the time, but if you push through it, shove it along, the shit falls over the edge and you emerge running. Hopefully.

I had a complete meltdown yesterday. I started to feel sick, my stomach churned and I was sure it wasn't the bean soup with excess coriander, or too many almond croissant corners. It wasn't butterflies it wasn't driving test, it wasn't period it wasn't exams. It was sick to my stomach. I burst after serving him, the compassion generated in under a minute drove me to sadness as the rich man asked me for Colombia Dark, I turned round and my eyes were filled. I turned round and swallowed it, walked calmly down the stairs and burst. The sickness went and I ate apple pie. Weak and crumbled, but space for anew.

I was worried a few months ago that any extreme emotion I ever felt would drive me to tears. Sadness equals tears, immense realisation equals tears. I would suddenly see the world alight and cry, it glowed and I couldn't believe it. I am starting to realise the glowing world is not a priviledge, but a right. I am fortunate enough to not know true suffering, and I must spread the level of compassion I yearn for. I think people can see it. They see a glimmer in your eyes if you are believing in the world.

(5th September 00:18)

Conflict of interests

So right now, I'm actually contemplating the appealing nature of both a short term let in an amazing sounding house, and a long term let with two nice sounding girls.Part of me is completely thrilled with the impermanence of a three month let, a sort yourslef out out, make plans, short burst of time which could feel like a holiday. What can you do in the time? How could you use this time to create something, whether it's a product, an idea, a feeling. A plan. Could it be really exciting and fresh, and the oppossite of domestic?

That's what Ir ea;l;y felt free about when I was away. I packed an excellent bag of perfect essentials which could have seen me through another 2 months of life. I had what I needed, and only 3 objects I didn't use out of about 50. I felt efficient and light, and satisfied that I carried with me all I wanted for appearance and entertainment. I didn't begrudge any object, wish I hadn't brought it, wish to send it home. I felt light and transient but mostly essential. Now I feel heavy.

I am back in the flat and objects gape out at me. REMEMBER ME. A sign from the past, a sign of your domesticity, your fake future, an imagining of a kitchen full of these ceramics which fill in the gaps. They sat in boxes for a year, waiting for their cupboards, but now the future is turned upside they have no purpose. They don't look beautiful and they don't work well. They are mashed, collected versions of a cossetted existence that is now void. They are souvenirs.

But I still am attached to them somehow. Boxing them up for a car boot sale, I wonder of a new house which collects Cadbury's bits, and how "I used to have some of those!" but I gave them away for my new existence, they didn't fit, or I skimmed where I shouldn't have. How many teapots do I need? Do things mean more if I found them, or if they were gifts? Does my broken, now severely impeded teapot go to the bin? Will I ever think about her if I don't use the teapot ever again? Am I even thinking about her when I burn my fingers on the stupid handle-less thing, or just how sad I feel that it fell out of the car on it's first trip outside in nearly twenty years?

A heaviness again. I cultivated a lightness away, and now it is buried under heavy clouds of indecision, confusion and cluelessness. I can feel the stress arms creeping back. Do I go for the scariest option? When I didn't know whether to steal away, it was the scariest option, the most exciting, the most unimaginable. That is the way taking a short let feels. I see him sitting on a rather orange creosoted fence, saying, moving twice in three months?? Twice?? Urgh, that sounds like a bit, you know. And then my own voice realises the argument is actually made up, my wariness is biting me. What would happen if I did the most scary thing?

Third person

Bloody hell everything is like MEMORY, everything, a song, a date, a cup, christ make it stop. I got back yesterday and I hadn't actually written anything for the whole of Germany, and I'm not really feeling liek I need to now. I am quite clear of mind on focused on ACTION but then these memories are like SLAM and I've got my frigging stress arms on again!?! Where did they spring from??

Anyway, having a declutter, really I don't need a melon baller, and I seem to have a rather large ratio of knives to other items of cutlery, and a penchant for them,,and wondering if that means anything. My 5ml Nigella spoon is missing and I want it back. What do I get rid of? What do you need in your life? Like a set of everything so if I was displaced in a country kitchen like the barn cottage (FUCK!) that I will never go to again, I could exist with this set of essential possestions. I can't even bloody spell, I've not missed typing I don't think. Possess. Possessions. There we go. So many people asked me when I was away 'do you speak English', like after I'd done a sentence, and I was like 'yes?'. But I'd not spoken at length for about four days so I'm sorry I've forgotten what to do.

I must have stopped thinking in Sweden? I don't know. I was just being. I was too busy in Germany to have thoughts and write them. Too busy to be having epiphanies. Or too busy having epiphanies to notice. Can one have multiple epiphanies? Or is that akin to being very unique? ANyway, when I spoke in France, it actually became easier, because I wasn't locked in my English head, oh oh, how to I, back up, and word it in French, and then speak it in French, oh. More like, I'm making communication here, I want you to know I'm saying this, in this country, so I will say it in your words. That was quite fun, though my French is AWFUL in sound. That would come in practice.

Anyway I am going to go and continue the sort and maybe my words will return soon and I will want to blog. But I actually just enjoyed writing to myself, and thinking about the next stage, rather than just pointless payless blogging and it's third person narrative disease. Bleugh.

oink

The wonderful thing about being physically ill is that that it gives the mind a rest. The best days at school were always the ones after an illness, when body is not quite in line with the day, and mind is like a parent, holding its hand, going, come on, you can be in the world, and my do I feel clear, and like I'm in control! I am the mind and I calmly run this show!

When I had my annual chest infection last year, I couldn't breathe for more than a few spoken words, but once on the keyboard, I had a voice again. That amazed me. That total mechanical break down of something you see as 'talking', spliced into thinking-breathing-saying out loud, or in this case, thought to hand. The lungs cope, the hands realise they aren't really very ill at all, look at them dancing. Right now I'm doing it, though my mechanics are achy, but this is when lap tops do what they say, and the be covers are the greatest solace.

The mind is dealing with the most pressing problem, the survival of the body, but at the same time it surely gets a lesson on what's important. It surely realises that emotions are fun but sometimes they need severing.

Trying, really

I feel tiredness is a state of mind. It's emotional tiredness a lot of the time. Remember getting up at 6am and traveling for hours to Alton Towers, hours and miles back, then going out to karaoke with a warm G glow (force that is), and feeling like you could stay up and on forever? Adrenaline takes over. But you have to let it. I think my stress arms are full of unexpired adrenaline. Pressure.

I was just thinking of booking a train ticket for Saturday night, coming back Monday morning. I don't know where, preferably somewhere cheap enough to go first class, so I can indulge in the Virgin lounge. Then I thought, no I'll be too tired. Then I thought, no, I'd be invigorating to take a trip out. ? .

Starting to get back to the work but super super critical of every word I write, every idea or thought I intone. What does it mean says my heavy existence. Do you mean it. And all it is is a sentence. i just don't want to have to look at anything I have tried to create as it just smacks of sadness, confusion and heaviness. The opposite of what good writing might be. But don't take my word for it, right now.

Another go...

I'm scrabbling around on the internet, looking for a welcome home, how was your day, hug, acknowledgment of my reality, someone to talk to about my stress arms. Email is faceless information swapping, facebook is faceless commentary, neither are what I'm looking for, yet I'm still looking.

A empty house. Mismatched schedules. Perpetual non reward. The house doesn't care if I've had a hard day, if I got told off for weeing too many times, that I had that 'I;m listening to myself talk and I sound stupid' moment a gazillion times, that I'm worried I have an infection. The house doesn't care about my reality, and it makes me feel homeless. Home is where the heart is, mine is shriveled, I'd say say sitting back into my stomach slightly. It's nowhere near my brain, and the work feels physically and mentally difficult.

If there was a Wikipedia entry for 'Stress arms', it would also say "see 'Vodka arms' and 'Caffeine arms' ". It's the same feeling, a buzzing through the veins downwards from the biceps through the top elbows, the forearms, collecting in the wrists, unable to be released from the tops of hands, fizzy fingers, then surging back to the elbow joint. I feel it heavy on the wrists and top forearms, it buzzes and they aren't quite sure what the message means. I'm stressed? What do I do about it?

"The failure of a human or animal to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined."

This project has become a symbol of my inability. It has grown into an opposite meaning to that which it exists. It isn't provoking creativity, but stillness and fear. This post is very dull but I'm just trying to get writing out. Bluh.

Incongruity feels good, still don't think good

You feel like you're alright? Want to test it? Look at it? How are you now? Fucked still right? GA GA GA GA GA GAAAAAAAA oo (infinity). I want it to stop now. I want it to stop and I want to start again. I am preoccupying myself with activities, totaling a grand amount of two tangos, three ballets (one slash jazz, one slash floor-barre), one each pilates and yoga, topped off with a tea dance. Sixty seven pounds and twelve hours of forgetting myself, not counting copious free minutes spent thrashing around to Jonathan Richman in my room.

I went to Granta talk at the Southbank,

I just wanted to say this is REALLY difficult at the moment, I am really not thinking anything, because if I allow myself to think I am thinking of the bad stuff straight away. Even though it's blended in tone, like the sour cream top layer on a Pret creme caramel, I am having to consciously cut through it and ignore the sharp taste, trying to tap into the sweetness beneath. It's REALLY hard and to be honest I'd rather be dancing to this song I'm listening to.

Anyway as I was saying, or trying to think about saying, I went to the Granta talk and I got the book 4 weeks before it's due out, and got it signed by A.L. Kennedy. I want to tell you (well me, but you) that please have something better to say when you meet someone you admire than 'I'm going to read your book of short stories because I don't have the memory for a full novel'. Stuff like 'have you got any gigs coming up?' or 'I like what you said about computer screens making the eyes oscillate differently', something interesting for fucks sake. Please. Interesting or nothing. Which could also apply here, I've said this before, but I'm trying to work through it, and who are you anyway, you 219 anons and 1 comment that I guessed.

I had a great day. It was a day off. And even trying to have a day off cycling didn't work, and I probably went further than I usually do after getting lost in EC1. Loads of really cool urban-developed parks, defo going to go back to that ridiculous one-seat alien pod swing, if I can remember where it is. I thought at the time how fun it was to get a bit lost, to have somewhere to go, but be quite relaxed about arrival. It reminded me of that thing I used to relay to people as though wisdom, 'it's no fun having nothing to do, only having things to do and not doing them!'I mean that rambling around town with no destination would be difficult, but having markers of time and places to be, gives even a loose structure that is pleasing to stray from.

I didn't know what to expect from the tea dance. Not quite neo knitting yet, give it a year I'd say. Those old boys are in for a right treat! I had such a fun time, spun around by a man who couldn't quite hear what I was saying and didn't know the rules, only the dances. He seemed to take a shine to me, and I wondered if his wife had died. I wanted to know how old he was, couldn't have been much more than ten years older that my dad, maybe mid 70s. There was a touch of Thai bride I suspected, mute-ish little wimps who came to life in spins. Don't hold me to that assertion, but it was a feeling I got. There was an small guy with a dropped waist and white wispy hair, who danced with a near 6 foot porcelain sailor size 6, and they were the sexiest couple going. He was amazing and I had a bit of a crush on him and he was about 90.

I felt quite special today. I picked up three Scandinavian-looking knives from the car boot, went to yoga in my matching jersey short suit. Had a really good coffee (Passeio, 'Ferrero Rocher on the sofa') with some re-toasted Turkish bread with lashings of salty butter. Read the papers online, danced around to Mary J. Blige a bit. Went into town on a new route full of parks and police. Danced fox trot, quickstep, waltz, rhumba and cha cha. Drank a LOT of tea, in china, and ate lots of margerine-light cake. Took off my red heels and rode home on my single speed bike, to a bag of lemon-salted almonds and a Julia Bradbury episode. Made a quick Nigel special, using that lovely Taste the Difference square spaghetti, very good. Had a shower and hung out my washing, and then remembered myself. Melancholy. I am an incongruous mix-up, but then I always preferred a 10p mix-up to a quarter of something samey.

I want people to love me like I love

He's amazing, picking me off the floor and throwing me into shapes like I care about life. Yes! I think I love dancing, I love Jonathan Richman, I love thinking don't get me wrong, but I love the opposite of thinking so much. The two splits of the mind and body, both should be worked at and nurtured and challenged. Extra curricular QUEEN me. Watch out Gwyneth. Bloody ridiculous paying 18 quid to 'pulse' my arms whilst springing back and forth on a machine, but so much fun and controlled and not thinking, I love it.

Tired now, gin in a tin and too many lemon salted almonds, not enough punctuation. Enjoying playing with language recently, using prose as poetry and changing its intentions and outcomes. You can only do it when you know the rules, and are clever enough to make new ones.

Right now I'm not and I'm listening to fun on Spotify having a bit of an upset and and melancholic time, but mostly just shimmying around and forget myself for a bit (and trying really REALLY hard to keep off TwiCkr, SFSG).

New Idea

A new list about what might be important in my quality of life index. If I was Monocle what would my criteria be? Maybe it’s time to think about what’s important. Look how big the world is. I remember thinking how London feels like a passport to the world, and it'll still be London (with a knowing italic because it already is a noun), if I left and came back to it next year. I have so enjoyed living here this year, almost a year now. It has whizzed by, and existed without me in a way. I haven't made a dint in it, it's been waiting, but I didn't force myself into it yet. It is ready, if I am.

But seeing as I'm not, and the inability is fed by my unbelievable present, perhaps a little stepping outside reality could be just what is needed. She told be about San Fransico and I was excited and not jealous, as it felt like I had an option. Even moving here last year felt so difficult, but now I feel I can do whatever. We were talking about possessions being heavy the other day, people and possessions shouldn't be enough to tie a spirit down.

Some Ideas:

• lots of 20s and 30s confused but interesting people
• a place where you can ride around and it is very acceptable
  
• a place with a good food scene, restaurants, writing and local shops
  
• a place with an excellent gallery or two that have the clues, film and music follow
  
• perhaps an English speaking place, then you don't have to sacrifice your identity in the move
  
• cheap rent, can't be too hard after here
  
• excellent coffee place to make me use this great transferable skill
• she was right when she said about sun
• a can-do attitude to folk
• people to visit in the same country, however far
• somewhere with an exiting studio scene
• a good magazine or paper that could be written for, and read
  

I want to be a destination whore. I can use the world. I can go around and meet new people and prove my own worth away from these clouds that are oh so local and or so parochial. When will I ever be as free as I am now?I might go and buy a map or a globe tomorrow, perhaps even the £14.99 gold light up one from the 98p store.

Up beat

So a pile on the bed one minute, then I'm deciding I'm ok and I need eat a quick salad and to put in contacts and speed to town for some dancing. Snap decision, out of hole, then a guy in a cunty car bips me and I'm just crying nudged up to the pavement. GA. I hate crying in public it's so degrading, apart from if it's bawling, like when those girls thought I was in real trouble and I was so glad to be rescued, that was very raw.

It was good to chat just then. Not like a problem shared is one halved, but like a problem doubled and divided by two is a bit smaller than the originals. Something is skimmed off the edges, like feet skin. I want my feet to be smaller. And I think at least a half size would be possible. I bet the royals have really small feet. Shaved feet. My shoes killed today. Only two hours. Part of me just wants to be a professional dancer, so bad! I love them all, I do! But the scene, yuk. Wrap tops and legwarmers and loads of manmade fabrics. Part of me is enrolling on a course at Laban. Another part is writing a cookbook. Another part is sectretly painting. Another part is in bed feeling like a lost ship.

I didn't revisit the problem, but felt comforted when she agreed it was ok to talk it out. The automatic response is not exactly bespoke, and I am almost unique (!). There are no rules here, or anywhere, I make them. I am free and I can say and do as I please, and I wouldn't want to regret not being angry enough, or not talking things out enough, not consolidating things for my own sense. Part of me abhors a cheat, part of me sees him as the difference between a day, or even an hour, if you were to be so callous. I make the rules. Others can help but our answers are our own. I need new rules.

Feels like clutch plates. Things spinning at the same time to make sense, driving things along, one parts and the other spins until it screeches stop. Not only did I get cheated on, but I got dumped. I got chucked without mutual consent. I was acted on and decided upon and thrown away and left on the side of the road.

My best friend has been frozen. The past is preserved and no longer makes sense, like that chilli jam I dropped heavy into the bin last week. Cracks of mould marbled through, generally useless, disregarding the time that was spent roasting those frigging chilli peppers and peeling off skins, smarting.

I am regretting it all over again. My objects are empty pieces that don't make sense, material wastage lying around pretending to be important, taken away, what do you have left now? How goes the judgement?

Quite some unique situation. My understanding is boundlessly annoying. Yes let's stay friends, with a new drafted in before I had chance to abdicate. Yes I was a fool, but I'll let you forget because my democracy is just right here, calming us down, and making still. She was right when she said the milk knows, the milk knows the serenity was just a big fucking act which about to blow.

Ugh

Ugh trying to break the extended apathy. Ugh. I have not written anything for almost a week, and I'm just not feeling sparky word-wise. Maybe that's a good thing, not consciously thinking about failing and amazing, two opposite ends. Just doing, just making real, product, rather then tapping into something other. Have I got the ingredients? If I have, it should be easy to make. If I haven't I need to nip out to get them, record some people saying some shit and just get this thing god damn finished.

Ugh I may have just decided to give up. Stalking goes two ways but I guess she's too busy for me. Who the fuck am I, what am I doing, why has this happened, how did the last hour disappear in a blur of soap opera, this can't be real? It is real, it's on the fucking internet. What are you going to do about it? What about decide what really matters and use this fizz in your veins? Try and be amazing no? Up down, round again, down and up, why? Do it in the real world though hey, if it even exists anymore. Go out and find it? These frigging frigging signs. I don't like who I am. There are sparks of an amazing being but I'm so uncommitted and nonbelievable I don't know who I am anymore.

I can't be glamorous. I'm from the West Midlands. There's no transatlantic/transpacific nothing there. I'm just HERE. I really think this comfort is keeping me so. It's comfort and not feral and not exciting, not working to eat or sleep, it's a cossetted world of form-filling and A grades and objects and class changes and misfires. I thought my axis changed and I made sense, now all I pine for is my originality, a soul, my heart, who am I now? And what makes me amazing?

I've been in bed for thirteen hours.

Asleep for nine, drifting for two, sitting on it for two. I woke up in a nightmare of 'he's gone off to choreography class in Covent Garden', which clearly makes no sense and I can only put down to the heat. Oh and me yelling that the bottom had fallen out of the future, despairingly, and then waking up and thinking, all you have to do is turn that can the other way up, and you have a gloriously free future vista. So why don't you do that?

It's hard when you want to do things and get on, but there is clearly some other niggly undercurrent running the show. I guess you just have to override this, as the conscious mind, and take the reins. If we all let out subconscious out in the waking hours, we'd be awful messes and wouldn't be hardly worth leaving bed. Stuff wouldn't happen, things would be disjointed, the momentum is lost.

I don't want to use his analogies to make sense of things, but that was always a good one. I don't want to lost my momentum with the work, but, as with everything, the bottom has fallen out. I need to tip everything the right way up, and contain what's clinging on, a bit of damage limitation. How I don't know.

I'm just reading Charlie Brooker, and deciding that he is good mostly becuase he is funny, has a wry humour and good language to spell it out. This can sometimes override all those conventions that you think you need. Then I read Tanya Gold, and decided if it's not right, you should abandon it. I couldn't even finish her piece, the context was cringy and not her, not even if you like not liking her.

Not written for ages, a week, stuff has happened but I've just not processed it into anything interesting to say. A lot of early nights, a lot of grizzly sleeps, napping in park deck chairs, double day showers, fridge fruit, getting back on the bike, research sparks, a new work place, past people meets, geeky film, impromptu dancing. A mix up, but nothing future-thinking for me. A LOT of dead references. Really missing that now. I don't want to sound desperate, but I don't want to be by myself. I'm not letting that feeling be desperate, it's human, as things don't work in a vacuum, and things work better if you have that person to talk to.

* as a postscript, my small hot water tea pot from last week is CRYING. You fill it and it leaks from the bottom silver gild lip, forces water out of its weak seal, and drips down. Only I could have a teapot that cries... *

What are your plans?

Crap, I just said completely the wrong things because i was feeling so transparent and I was the first to go. I'm pretty aware I probably offended some people and made myself sound completely arrogant and over-arched. I just felt like it at that exact moment, perhaps I was sweaty and hot, worrying about my eyebrows. Perhaps I was just very truthful. I didn't sell myself at all, put on a professional front, I just laughed manically and worried about my eyebrows and watched the steam in my corners and said I didn't have any plans. How are you? Are you sure you want to ask that?

Some people are good and compartmentalising and keeping bits separate, no, personal thought, you know you don't belong here now, now go off and leave the area ok, I am working here. But not me. What are your plans? Well I'm planning that I need to see the osteopath this morning and I'm looking forward to my stomach not sitting on my intestines, I need a pedicure badly so my walk doesn't hurt and I want to get my hand x-rayed. I'm going to fetch my bike tomorrow and take it to the shop for a check over, and hope I can breathe ok, because if my lungs are incapacitated I am just going to cry, on top of everything else. Then, I'm going to quietly get on with my work, typing and ideas fro school, alongside nurturing live ideas and hoping I have some sparks. I'm going to think about my cookbook, which to you sounds nothing, and even if it wakes five years I'm going to really try to come up with a good something new.

I am going to start painting, and finish of my stupid yellow cardigan. I am going to her studio to make my very-long-overdue laptop bag on an industrial machine, alter my size 12 clothes, and have good conversations and ideas about the difficulties of Being Different. I am going to book some train tickets to Chirk, and plan out my summer at work. I am going to continue to chat to those with shared experiences and advice, to keep me on the straight and wobbly, and try and be a bit more together than I have been of late, and not so late. I am going to take a three-pronged attack, and possibily be a little self-destructive, and shave my legs more often. And collet lipsticks.

I am going to spend less time on facebook and internet browsing, and more time connecting with books, which will be hard, but I need to begin to build up this skill. I want to read Malcolm Gladwell's book and go to see Alela Diane in Brighton. I am going to work on Tuesday, the show on Wednesday, the symposium on Thursday, the dogs on Friday, the party on Saturday, the market on Sunday, and then we'll be back to today again. I will keep calm and keep my eyes open, and try to relax the tension in my forehead because it doesn't look attractive. Perhaps I haven't got anything Planned, but perhaps I will just spend the next weeks feeling a little better, and nurturing the opposite of convention, because difference will pull me through.

The opposite of fleas

Oh dear. It's all very well knowing exactly which era of clothing brands float your boat (90s French Connection, St Michael pre M&S), but now, objects. Clothes are one thing, pieces of portable property, foldable, scrunchy fibres, shove em in the cupboard. Crocks, are quite another.

I just bought a Paragon for Asprey 'Tea for One' set from the car boot. It is beautiful cool peachy beige, proving quite to be the colour of now, what with all this Stella McCartney/Adidas wafting around and a definite ballet-soft edge. The tea set is beautiful. Tea pot, a smaller tea pot for hot water, milk jug sugar bowl egg cup, sandwich and cake plate, cup and saucer. Nine items, some used, some clean and new. A silver burnish to their edges, again some worn and some crisp. I teared over it in between quiche steps; spotted during the blind bake, pored over mixing the eggy filling, fetched during final baking. Twenty quid spent in enough time to make 4 red pepper and feta quiches that would cost you £20 for lunch from Rose Bakery. And cost me about £2.

So I found myself doing that thing again where I weigh up what I need, what I want what I've got. I often use that adage of 'Is this the last time you will ever be able to eat a pudding, is this the last time you will ever be able to buy this?' It comes down to a rarity. Things gain more value if they are really obscure and unavailable. It's almost the opposite of collecting. Collecting is gathering stuff you know you will be able to buy more of, almost the same, ever so slightly different. But still I guess unique and one off. Rarity equals value and a decision made. I still regret not buying the perfect harlequin tea/cake set from that weird craft centre. I'm, sure another would exist, it didn't feel too exclusive and one-off, but I've not yet been in a position to buy one, wrong places at wrong times.

Objects tie you down. If they are the wrong ones. I want to boil mine down to concentration. But yet I still seem to be front-loading this concept.

Train Writing

I gave the woman a twenty pound note and am now sitting in an almost empty first class carriage with vistas speeding past my peripheries. It was probably the best twenty pounds I ever spent, or this week at least. maybe if you don't count last night. You get the feeling that this is closer to the dream than the cramped sweaty masses back there, actually in front there, but I left it so it is also back, kind of.

I sat down to transcribe my interview and my dictaphone battery went dead. I hate stuff like that happening, it says, don't you even be lazy, don't you even forget to bring every possible power source with you on this journey away from shops and cupboards. If you forget one item of power, you will incur pain and cost. You will have to buy a continental plug for 4 times the price it actually costs, because you are buying it in Paris's hip electrical store.

It broke the memory last night. I hadn't been to St Pancras since we went away in January. It seems like a lifetime away. I had a good day at work today, who knows why, perhaps because I ran the ship from the beginning, perhaps because I was in good time, perhaps because I layered on some make up. But not even 15 mins walk away up Bloomsbury my eyes filled up with burning and lack of sleep. Makeup covers the mess, and social sanity covers the other mess. Go back to your bedroom, wash off the makeup, it's just you, and remembering that isn't too nice, still.

It struck me that the timing could not have been worse. A bombshell at the start of a difficult project that was yet to be borne as idea never mind substance. How could it survive? How could it even begin amongst all this mess? It was most inconsiderate, but then things don't happen at the right time in life, the peaks landing on pre-destined peaks, what are the chances? despite everything else in the world, in the months running up to, and including, the 19th of June 2009, you will come to the pinnacle of proving your greatness and ability. That's a lot of pressure.

It's hard to believe in the new when the old just lied to you. How can anything evolve and grow and be when things feel so fragile and unbelievable. I guess you just have to give them a go. I have three hours of my journey left. I am going to write some prose. I don't know what I'm doing and I can't see the outcomes clearly one bit, but if I begin then at least I break down that barrier. There are also biscuits on my table...I'm on a TRAIN!