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!

How quick is too quick with regards to answering emails, texts, and facebook posts? If you're alone as much as me and sit as close to the computer as me, the internet becomes my life line and the ding of an incoming makes something light up inside. But how quick is too quick? Everyone does it when you meet someone new, like a friend or a potential, you don't want them to think you haven't got a life concurrently as having a phone. But right now I don't have much of a life, I have consigned myslef to being alone with my research at a time when all I really need is humanity.

So it's been difficult. Researching is fun, facts to tell people, ideas to fit in, but it occurred to me that wouldn't it be so much more rewarding to write a piece for Elle on How to Have A Break Up Not A Break Down. Or some recipe writing including experimental pancakes, putting rosewater in the batter and lavender sugar, for instance. Or making a trip to the National Railway Museum to write about the restoration of the Flying Scotsman. Or any other amount of ideas which are just steps, rather than this great heavy monolith I'm trying to create, and am inevitably going to fail.

I have barely seen anyone for 3 days. I mean I've been out, I've been bodies, but not people. I have had several jilted phone conversations, where I've almost wanted to say, I'm sorry I haven't had a conversation with a person in the room for 2 days, I'm finding this a little weird. I nearly called the Escape Editor, but I'm glad I didn't, as I still don't really know what I'm supposed to say. Hi, you don't know me, but I'm doing a project on trains and I need to know if your think it fits a gap. That's it. I think there's a gap though, so why should I have to get someone of worth to prove it?

I haven't interviewed anyone. It will come to it that I am just ringing up press offices for quotes next week, but I'm still not really sure what I'm supposed to say. I'm writing this feature on ... and I need you to say ... so I can back it up. I just don't feel liek the course has covered this too well. The jargon side of things. the calling is all about knowing the lexicon of obtaining quotes from people. I know if I could just follow someone round for a few hours and listen to them do it I'd go, ah yes, as that's the tyoe of learner I am, you tell me what I have to do and I will run with it. If you don't tell me, I just don't know, and I can't seem to craft it for myself.

I am rather enjoying the secondary research. It's intrinsic to who I am to pick up on interesting things, I just like different stuff, but the primary bit is where I fall. How am I supposed to ask someone to say something if I don't know what I want them to say. it's calling someone up and saying, I'm pressing record now, you're going to be a genius now, right. And you're having this conversation where they know you are waiting for them to say something amazing. They can probably hear the yes! moment in your tone of 'riiight'. Anyway I wouldn't say this is the sole problem, seeing as I am missing tutorials all over the place and keep putting my In Design documents in the trash. But it was a problem before all the other stupid problems, so I need to work on it.

Perhaps about now is long enough to make that reply.

I am doing travel writing!

I think I want to be a travel writer. I am listening to the programme on Excess Baggage about the Travellers' Tales course, and it sounds really good. He says it's about mixing a journalistic style with a novelistic style, which is what I like to do. He does say that a big mistake is to write for yourself, which I understand to an extent, but I think I write best when I am tapping into something, as though putting a needle in a vein and watching the bloody seep through the clear plastic tube. IT's a bit gross, and I wouldn't have thought o f it if I hadn't seen that film.

They are reading out their work. I remember when I read out my writing about the saucepans. I might try and find it. Everyone sat back and respected me. I was embarrassed and spoke badly. I wasn't asking for acceptance, I was laying my head on the desk, and the thoughts jumped out, and ran around the room. They probably ran out of my ears. And I felt so excited. It wasn't a cliche, not like a lot of stuff in general, which doesn't really say anything, and badly. I think at least write well, or have a good idea, but to be devoid of both, just why bother? If you're not There, just make a good meal or do some ironing.

I'm going to apply for the internship. I think I would really really like it actually. Someone just finished reading their work and everyone clapped! Clapped is a horrible word, applauded is better. I am practically salivating at the idea of getting a DB sleeper from Brussels to Berlin. That company is HOT. Starting at only £75 for a single trip, but you know there is an epiphany included. I want.

Sorry I am not wholly on this page clearly, Firefox is getting some serious multi-tab action, keeps freezing. I want to go on a trip RIGHT NOW. Imagine all that time to read books, not having to work, to meet people, see amazing things, eat lots of beige and play on bunk beds! Imagine! A lot more excited about the work now. Not sure how-why, what happened. I do remember this morning, lying in bed, thinking, this is rock bottom. Not the worst you could imagine, not awful, a pretty manageable rock-bottom in my little cosseted existence. But still the bottom scrapings of the pan. And tomorrow the pan scrapings will inevitably be the same, so why waste time waiting for the hate to go, just get on with ignoring it a bit more efficiently.

Nice things

I am going to find someone to adore me. It shouldn't be difficult. I am not a pain, I don't moan, I am grateful and friendly, I cook nice food and I want you to be having a nice time. I like fun things, I like nice things, and I like sharing intelligence. It shouldn't be hard. Maybe I should stop mourning and start looking.

I felt fine before the news, and then before the accident. I feel like a stomach on legs right now. I think it's about as big as a honeydew melon. Heavy and achy. Before this I had a relatively good week. My tutorial brought things together a little bit, even though I've yet to act. I will start In Designing later on! Yes! I WILL. I enjoyed My Hair At Work, I enjoyed it a lot. I've been robbed of first hair week fun really, I love floating around with a new air. Funny how appearance makes a difference.

It all started rather grandly with the ridiculous day of indulgence last Sunday. What started as a yoga class rolled onto a dance class and into prawns and peonies and then shiatsu. Really really indulgent. Oh and an Bramley and blackcurrant yogurt. I felt expensive and over doused, but happy with what she used to call 'throwing money at a problem'. I even bought paints and canvas, which I've yet to use, as it's never quite right. Maybe tomorrow.

The shiatsu was bizarre, it felt strange to have to pay to be touched, when it used to be free, and I kept drifting into sleeps and then something would hurt and I would jolt. I'm glad I bought the peonies. I enjoyed carrying them romantically around town, next to my face and offset by a blue-violet outfit. They are a short season and I will indulge until they pass. It is always sad when they start to die however. The tissue petals melt onto each other and you realise you can't stop them evolving. I wonder if the person who adores me will buy me peonies. It can't be that all boys don't care about flowers, surely some of them care about beauty and truth.

Little lights

I feel like a candle taper of minimal width, perhaps 3mm, and the candle is long and spindly and the flame is small like a pointed make-up brush. A small gust of wind blows it and it flickers and grows again. He tells me he's going to New York to meet the Girl and the candle is stabbed out on a dotty concrete paving stone, the wrong side. My little flame is stumped out and the candle is bent, and it's ridiculous anyway, what a stupid small flimsy flame. Almost pointless.

It comes in waves. How could someone be so unemotional about a situation? How can it be black and white, this day and that, cut, off, different, new, old. I wrote a lyrical email and got five-word-sentence replies. Not even capital letters. No warmth and no love. Perhaps there wasn't any for a while, I just didn't see it. How can a person be so disillusioned for so long? I want to delete that part of my life, but it is part of me. I want to feel that my case is special but it's completely ordinary. Perhaps I though I was superhuman? I am above your relationship fripperies, I am in control of everything that happens to me. Maybe that's the wake-up call, to this you are in control of life is futile, you are a tool and that is all. An object.

I'm glad I'm not seriously hurt. It would be rubbish to know that no-one cares if my ribs are smashed in, but thankfully they're not. No-one is a grand unfair statement, I really mean no One. The person that cares above all other people. One person. (The) One. Now I don't know if I feel sick because I have been in a road traffic accident, or because I have been punched. You think you did better by moving to London, well I get to follow some girl to New York. Look how pedestrian my choice was. Look how dull and staid and regular, yes I'll meet some gorgeous people in a city of seven million, but look, no, apparently not. And not like I'm ready to, perhaps I am screwed and should be ready right away. I've been playing it by ear, trusting myself, which I suppose is the most important thing. Follow your little lights.

Ice Cream

She piled up the ice cream like it was a test. The more I tried to hide with it, the more I noticed work men and people in cars watching me eating it, or not eating it, dripping all over my hands, my dress, the pavement, everywhere. There's a problem with laughing by yourself, people think you're a bit gone.