Two Thousand and Ten (or is it Twenty Ten? Clarification someone, please.)

So I haven't written since December 2009. And now it's 2010. I remember when I truly believed that by now we'd have floating cars, there would be hotels in space and I probably would have figured out how to stop losing mobile phones...but alas, none of the above is true.

But I'm still here.

In the past 5 days, two people from completely random parts of my life have read and sought me out to comment on this blog. This blog that I started on a whim nearly 5 years ago to find a place to write about anything. Now in this time of Twitter and Facebook Status updates everyone has something to say and a place to say it in, but to me, nothing has been able to substitute this blog. So after an extended period of self-doubt, I think I may start regularly updating my silly actions on my silly blog once again. I can unload about the day I met Steven Spielberg and completely ignored him in favour of the actor he was with whose name I still can't remember. Or how I managed to lose 5 phones in 6 months. Or just to tell someone somewhere about the lovely bus driver who let me on the bus for free this morning, reminding me that London really can be a wonderful place to live, despite what critics say about it being cold. Sometimes it's nice to be able to share these things with the atoms in cyberspace, and occasionally a friend or two.

I guess as the sun has finally gotten its damned act together and decided to shine on this hustling smokey city, it's given everyone the energy to spring clean and reasses their lives. Writing is a part of mine and by gum I'm gonna do it.




Errr, I can't think of anything else to say here, so I'm going to go.

Thank you Emma and Thank you Graham for giving me the little push I needed.
Roll on 'whytheflippinhellnot - 2010'.

Inappropriate Longing

One of my most annoying traits is how quickly I develop and sustain inappropriate crushes. It's like I'm in a perpetual state of teendom, finding new, vulnerable boys (Are twenty-something males considered men yet?) to be obsessed with. I don't remember any lengthy period of time where I didn't have some sort of love interest. Like the second act of a Shakespearean comedy, the love interest has been identified, but it's three more acts until the wedding, and anything can happen until then.

"You're boy-crazy" my friend Ellie told me when we were 14.
"You're boy-crazy" my friend Dan told me when I was 21.
"You're boy-crazy" my friend Tracey told me last week.

Hmmm.

It's not as though I want to be in relationships with these crushes. I'm happy being single. More often than not, it's just someone to think about when I'm bored. And more often than not, they're people who already have people. My most recent crush for example.

I met him through a friend, all curly hair and smiles. I knew off the bat he was taken. Probably because he had that glow of love around him. It's as impenetrable as a forcefield and as alluring as a rainbow. Quite probably it's the knowledge that he's nice enough to initiate and maintain and real, long term, grown up relationship. Whatever it was, he had it in buckets and spades.

He was funny. He was smart. He laughed at my jokes - at the right places and everything. Most importantly, the same way bats can feel the presence of other bats when humans in the same room can't, writers can recognise other writers. People fascinated by words use them differently, I guess. As soon as he asked me what my degree was in, I knew he knew.

"English Literature eh? Oh, and language?"

Yes, I know you did it too. I can hear it all over you.

Cocktails flowed freely (mostly because he was getting them for free). Music sang and danced around us and our conversation was making leaps and bounds of its own. Despite my best attempts to keep this in check, with every flicker of a smile from him, I could feel the beginnings of a crush stirring. When he nodded me over to help him out at the bar and teased me about how south London my accent gets the more Caipirihnas I drink; I knew the flower of my crush was starting to bloom. All bright and pretty, damn it. The music taunted us until we deigned to join in with it. He spun me, and the flower made another lurch towards the forbidden sun. Why oh why is forbidden fruit so sweet?

Let's get some things clear, he didn't flirt with me. I could smell the love on him. For my part, I did my best to hide all signs that this newly budding infatuation was creeping up my throat, choking me whenever I tried to speak. The night went on fabulously and he was beginning to glow. Typical.

The clock struck 11. I took myself and my flower home.

We got in touch afterwards - purely business - and he directed me to his blog, to see his writing - again, for business - and it was brilliant. His most brilliant piece was written about his girlfriend. All evocative images and precious emotions. Intense rawness, real and beautiful. Boy got skills, literally.

It's a safe crush. One where, ironically, I will remain uncrushed. My little flower of longing for him will remain in my head. Mutual appreciation is a state I'm growing more comfortable with in these situations.

I wonder who it'll be next week...?

BFF

Today, one of my best friends is moving to Spain, indefinitely. Am gutted. He's been one of my most constant, trusted and fun companions since I moved back to London from Manchester last year. He humoured me while I moaned excessively about missing it. He accompanied me on most of my journeys back up there to visit. He showed me new places, secret places in my own city to help me miss my beloved Northern city less.

We looked for jobs together. Ate our packed lunches together. Pooled money together to buy beer when we were bored. He was one of those mates who I could belch, cry, check out hot guys in front of. A brother from another mother. Best friends forever.

And then we kissed.

Not just a little peck on the lips, to be followed by the obligatory face-scrunch and mutual 'what are we doing?!'.
Cue amused, slightly embarrassed glances.

I'm talking a full on we-both-want-this, why-haven´t-we-been-doing-this-the-whole-time, our-friendship-is-never-going-to-be-the-same-after-this, passionate kiss. Oh, and complete with the 'Body Hug'. You know, that embrace you give someone you really care about, where your bodies kinda melt into each other's and you warm yourself with the other's body heat as you feel their heart racing in your chest. That hug.

To follow this up with a 'what were we doing' glance, you might end up signalling complete and total rejection from the brink of a potential, inescapable, irrefutable love.

To follow this up with a 'let's talk about this' glance, you might end up creating a grown up situation where you decide, before anything happens, to recognise the attraction, but preserve your friendship in spite of the chemistry. Because you both appreciate that what you have is pure and rare and special and you wouldn´t want that to change for anything in the world.

No, he and I are way beyond up for any of that.

"What kiss?"

Music is Love and Love is Music. So Santa, please bring me CDs for Christmas

"If music be the food of love, play on;" says Orsino in the first line of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (Incidentally, this was the play that first whet my appetite for the Bard). You know what, he was bloody right. People put on Barry White if they wanna get down and dirty. They put on a bit of 'Sexual Healing' if they're looking to make the next move. And as much as music enhances amorous situations, for me, music has always been love. Full stop.


You know that feeling when you hear a song you know you'll grow to love for the first time? You hold your breath cos you don't even want the sound of your own inhilation to interrupt the aural pool your ears are swimming in? Thick and fast the tunes rush past your ears and into your soul, making your blood run cold in the best way. When you want to cry while the song plays and when it ends because it's suddenly struck you that it's the most perfect song you'll ever hear. And all you want to do is listen to it again and again and again even though you know it'll never be as glorious as that first time?

When I was 15, my friend Z gave me an ear of her MiniDisc to let me listen to a song called 'Take My Hand' - the final song on Dido's No Angel album.
"Listen closely though," she said. "And close your eyes cos I know you'll love this. Listen hard though, because you can never listen to this for the first time again."

She was right. We listened to that song, all 7 minutes of it, sitting at the back of our coach in Italy where we were driving on a sunshiney day with luminous, looming Italian mountains on either side of us and I didn't see a thing. I thought I was asleep until the song finished and I realised that I'd been on a journey through strings and synths and just wound up right back where I'd started, at the back of a coach in Italy.

But I wasn't back anywhere. I'd heard that song and now I was different. A slight change, invisible to the naked eye. I was different.
As soon as I got home, I bought that album.

This happened to me most recently when I was sat on a train, flitting fickly through FM radio stations and my ears picked out the sound of a twanging guitar and a raspy voice singing at, no, to me. I sat still, afraid to move in case I rustled something and interrupted this fluffy, dark beautiful cloud of sound. Like the first time you hear your new favourite song and you demand to know who sings it but you wait patiently til the end to do so in case you miss a bit. A lovely melodic chord at the end of the song.

This song went on to haunt me, playing in my head when I woke up. Serenading me back to sleep when the end of my day found me back in my bed. I started off only knowing a bit of the chorus. You know that annoying period of time when you hear a song before anyone else, and so singing the chorus over and over doesn't spark that 'Oh yea, I LOVE that song' bit of recognition in them, which let's be honest, is the only reaction you want.
Instead I got 'Who's doing that annoying whistling?'

Weeks later, the radio people play my song again. And again. They play the video to tmy song, again late at night, so the image of the band are etched into my mind's eye, playing a private concert to me as I continue to whistle along.

The song was 'Sex on Fire' by Kings of Leon.

Needless to say I now have the album...and the four others that came before it.

Meredith

A girl I knew when I was at school was buried last week. She was in the year below me, but one of those younger girls that you know with an older sensibility. She was lovely and calm and funny and beautiful. She lived in the same village as me when I went on my school exchange programme. She was the one who reminded me that normal people existed when my borderline schizophrenic exchange partner would decide that she could no longer bear me in her house, so she would take me round to see her friend and mine: the Mediator.

During that two week exchange, we talked about boys and school and life and love. I had always known of her, but in two weeks I got to know her. And when we came back and she drifted back to her social group and me to mine, I was grateful for those two weeks. They had begun something. A knowing smile when a song came on. A glint of the eye when one of us would overhear a name in the other's conversation and know a secret about the be-named one that hadn't been shared with anyone else. A warm feeling when the other one was laughing because we'd know when the last time the other had cried was.

You don't need a lifetime to grow to love someone, and Meredith, I loved you.

And the search goes on...

I guess noone ever said looking for a job was easy. So why did I think it would be even slightly straightforward? Am I just that optimistic/hopeful/naive?

I'm a good person, a hard-worker, someone who enjoys getting their teeth into something that will keep their minds busy and their hands occupied. Too much thinking time doesn't ever do anybody any good. Look at Freud. A sexually-obsessed coke-head by the end of it. The Pete Doherty of the psychological world if you will. I digress... (although the image of Sigmund waltzing around with droopy, red eyes and a guitar slung over his shoddily clothed shoulder is an intriguing one)

Do you ever get the feeling that you have to choose between following a dream and following Johnny Dollar? Like if you go where you're guaranteed a decent pay cheque you know that you'll be giving up the chance to flirt with a career in something you've loved all your life? On Saturday, I withdrew the last £10 from my overdrawn account and have as a result, had to so some real life evaluation. It's strange that I still feel so young when it comes to The Grand Scheme Of Things, yet in terms of a career, 22 is a time when you should at least have a foot on the ladder you're hoping to climb up (y'know, assuming there's no glass ceiling halfway to the top). My feet are still barefoot on the ground.

Gosh how scary is this, turning into a Grown-Up lark? All I wanna do is hold onto my Binky for just a few moments longer but the Real World is tightening its grip on me. So off I go, head high, clean underwear on, into the unknown. May Freud have mercy on me.

What am I doing here?

It's stupid o'clock in the morning, I'm sitting at my computer having had a 4hour cyberchat with JP. It was as good as always, but it's half three in the morning. Madness.

Ok, it's been a while since I've written here and I've had something of an eventful year including one time-consuming job and one time-consuming relationship. Both are now over and although I feel lighter, it's the sort of uncomfortable, unbalancing lightness that you feel after you've been carrying a heavy rucksack for ages until you get used to the weight. When you take it off, your body isn't used to the lightness and inadvertently propels you forward in a strangely organic act of compensation of weight distribution.

I've moved back home. Back to the big smoke; back to the family fold and I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm supposed to be looking for a job. I've got a degree. I've got work experience. Despite the fact that my family and all my oldest friends are here, I don't really feel like I'm here, y'know?

Maybe that's why I'm awake at 03.36 on a Wednesday morning. Just to see what I'll do about it.

...Probably should just go to bed. It is getting rather late...