27 June - caravaggio

Recently I was blind double dating. A different kind of double dating ie. we were 2 women and we had 1 man, chosen from some replies to an online ad. We had invited him to an art exhibition. Am sure he thought it was just a ruse and we probably disappointed him by not offering to smother him in some sort of reverse spit roast type thing (hideous term but we all read the tabloids and footballers have popularised it). He never got in touch the following day to thank us for a lovely time but …that’s fine. He was French, they are meant to be rude.

Anyway, as to our attire, I was all wispy 'spirit of kyliness' and my friend … was a bit more French existentialist, at least that’s what you are with a black polo neck. The French lawyer failed to see this as a tribute to his presence. Not sure if my friend was conscious of what she’d chosen. She said it was more because when she meets men for the first time she tries to hide her huge breasts otherwise they spend all evening staring at them.
She was wearing tie up 30’s boots and I wonder if guys entertain fantasies about these, all those laces to undo (though these days there’s handy zips on sides or back). These kind of fetishes are developed in an early age as it is said because children would have just been at mum’s shoe level and hence…whatever shoes she had they fixated on. But what if you were born in the 70’s would a man have a fetish for cork platforms? No one I know ever mentioned this and no sex magazines ever feature anything but the standard stuff.
A few days later I was sat on my sofa chatting about nothing much apart from North Korea, tsunami disaster, impending fatherhood, slovakian women etc with my friend S. (41) and I asked him how come all guys buy into a Betty Page sort of notion of sexiness (v. 40’s 50’s) even young ones who don't actually know of Betty Page and why does that work? He said there were none of those suspenders/heels when he was growing up but somehow he’d assimilated the concept and remembers being v. young and buying suspenders for his first g/friend and getting v. excited just looking at her. Even as he simply told me this he was clearly getting excited. Not that it takes much. This is a man who will avow to 5 daily masturbatory sessions. Not very long but regularly so. No wonder it then takes so long to get him to come, undersensitised penis from years of constant stroking I fancy. But I digress.
We can’t get to the bottom of this one without having to go bother Freud who of course wrote in a period where they had those garnments, so we need a more recent psychiatrist. But I can’t think of hone. Hardly the query I can put in Ask Jeeves whilst am at work non? We can’t work out either what the equivalent would be for women to get stuck on in men. I mean, I like a perfectly creased James Bond sort of trouser but I don’t salivate at the thought/sight or even if I touch the material. I used to know a psychiatrist come to think of it but he was more of an addiction expert rather than fetishes.

24 June - dyas & nabokov

Some unrelated thoughts...

In Robert Dyas they sell a plastic mini tea bag bin for £4.99. I stared at it for about 4 mins. Trying to fathom why would anybody need one as opposed to stretching their arm and dropping the used teabag into their main bin or putting it on the kitchen top/in a saucer or other cup and then throwing it away. Truly a modern day puzzle! The plastic looked all of 7p’s worth. I resisted the temptation to check if it was made in China. Admittedly there are some useful new inventions. I was tempted by a fan that you can program to automatically switch off after 2 or 4 hours, but the tea bag bin seemed obscene considering £4.99 (and it was on offer, save £1) is probably the price of some inoculation for kids in third world. Think they should rename our worlds and make that the fourth it’s just not getting any better and before anyone accuses me of anything… I did do my third world studies/NGO’s etc. I do slightly know what I’m talking about and can navigate my way through the Economist and the likes. It is to be noted that Robert Dyas (and camera /phone shops) are full of men on their lunch breaks. The remaining ones are subdivided equally between pubs/wine bars and a 3 deep throng positioned in front of the male mags music/cinema /games mags at WHSmith. However, it is impossible to get their attention, they are 'fixated'.

Found this in Despair by Nabokov “Alas, my tale degenerates into a diary... I have grown so used to writing, that now I am unable to desist. A diary, I admit, is the lowest for of literature”. Brilliant! I am so hoping that my diary will generate a tale instead. Elsewhere in the preface he says “in kinship with the rest of my books, this has no social comment to make, no message to bring in its teeth. It does not uplift the spiritual organ of man, nor does it show humanity the right exit. It contains far fewer ‘ideas’ than do those rich vulgar novels that are acclaimed so hysterically in the short echo-walk between the ballyhoo and the hoot”. Seems my aspirations tally with Nabokov. Am elated to have found a kindred spirit. Foyles have his total output in attractive slim line grey Penguins. I covet. So many I never read before…

23 June - revisionism & thunderbolt & lightning

Revisionism.. does it mean for example old communists and Marxists no longer preach that gospel presumably, though I doubt they change as much as becoming merchant bankers or military men for example (teachers? social workers? Yes). But it affects other spheres of your life, and again you get to revise as you age and this blog is all about that. It means that I can go to see in the same week both Motley Crue at Wembley and We Will Rock You /the musical at the Dominion (both were guest tickets, paying for these shows would be unthinkable) and have moderate fun at both.
This from the woman who in between these two nights was prepared to abandon a superb solstice party on a rooftop high above the city with stunning views of tower Bridge and St Pauls, a marquee, a lawn, flowers, delicious food and flowing champagne and hammocks and all because … the initial music soundtrack that greeted the guests was Jamiroquai. Not even the new album, but the same old shit. And previously in Barcelona, I had to get up from the chill out cushions and the mojitos to go ask the management “Please please please can you remove the Sade CD on repeat and play something else?” The place, Shoko (or Oshko?), was pretty stunning with obligatory young gay waiter who hated us but we could take that sneer, but Sade? No. She’s the only artist as whose gig I actually fell asleep for ten minutes (was at RAH about 20 years ago, had to go just because two friends were in danger of going out with Stuart and Andrew from the band – I could never see the point of the girl truly and knowing she’s gone to live in Jamaica and is/was a major spliffer still doesn’t improve the experience). No! I say No!
Anyway, between the two, and bearing in mind I’ve lost credibility many a time by declaring that if Tommy Lee asked I’d say yes, just the once. He’s the only rocker I’d made that exception for. Actually, Joe Perry too, WWRY was better. Not that I’m about to start reviewing shows but at least the songs are memorable. The Crue don’t have any… just pantomime rock which deploys strategically some pole dancer babes who somehow can make 6,000 people forget the songs are crap. Not that ‘Love to ride my Bicycle’ (or whatever that one’s called), is any better. Shockingly, Bohemian Rhapsody was released in ‘75 and despite knowing all the words at some point, I welcomed God Save the Queen in ’77 as the future and was prepared to volunteer to kill Brian May. Kind of odd as before I must have worn down the tracks on Led Zep’s and the Floyd’ vinyl, but there you go. The new is just too …exciting.
The best part of WWRY (which means also admitting that I deliberately came into contact with something by Ben Elton – yeuch!) was that from now on if there’s any argument brewing I shall say at the top of my voice ‘Thunderbolt and lightning/ Very very frightening!’ and hope to defuse work or personal situations by turning them into farce. To explain further… ‘are we really arguing about this? Ooohh I’m soooo scared!, thunderbolt and lightning etc.’

22 June - imelda & bunions

I get teased at work for my Imelda sized shoe collection. In my defence today I replied that I am fast developing one of the genetic inheritances from my mother, ie. bunions and that I’m making the most of shoes now before I have to switch to wearing clogs or trainers in, say, ten years? Now, that would not ever have been the answer I gave until…now. It’s an ageing/ageist answer. Why did this happen? Why didn’t I say instead “Having my toes sucked is one the things I like the best, hence shoes are meant to draw attention to this most erotic zone of mine”. A bit longwinded, but much more interesting or at least bound to leave colleague speechless for a few seconds – if male colleague I would have looked him not in the eye and am sure he’d have died of embarrassment as the mention of toe sucking had made something grow and that would teach him. I don’t comment on guys shirts around here.
I hate the idea of bunions, though on the other side, paternal hair stayed dark till his sixties, so have inherited that and hardly any whites have penetrated the highlighted mane. This simply means I don’t have to rush to cover the re-growth v. often. However it’s proved impossible to ask father if er… other white hair was late in colonising nether regions. This is another of those things that you worry about past 40. Apparently, white hair is more likely to grow straight so if you’re curly it definitely sticks out, a Caribbean friend pointed this out saying it really affects her. I guess not having saved money for a pension should worry me more but you know what… it doesn’t. Ok, there’s waxing (in case any males are reading this, no, you can't dye your pubic hair) but an ageing bald crotch will hardly be more attractive than one with white hair, male or female. Scary image just flashed into my head. Time for a coffee.

19 June - sonar

Truly age is a state of mind. Just when I get depressed about invisibility, I also get reminded that I can do exactly whatever my younger friends are doing and have the same exact experience (if only mine is coloured by everything not feeling that new or novel). There is a dance music festival in Barcelona every year for the past 12, called Sonar. 6 of us went to it and it turned out to be largely irrelevant (ok so we got excited by the Chemical Brothers djing for example but we come from London not Latvia and can see them anytime) and we hardly went to the actual events of the festival because show some Brits a beach and sand and sunshine and why would you want to be anywhere else if coming out of the usual s hit weather? If on said beach 80% of the women present are topless (not something they do in Italy or France much any more) and they are not mooses - sorry but this is a term my male friends used, and it’s miles less offensive than minging - then … they are not going to go and watch anything else. If on top of that the beach is organised enough with vendors bringing beer to your little space on the sand and for only a few pennies more than the bar twenty feet away then you’ve found a perfect holiday.
A little later you walk to excellent food and a little later you walk to a bar where several hundred other people are dancing till 1am where vendors with beers are still doing the rounds. This is a bit of a boring choice though and I have spotted a gap in the market for ready mixed cocktails or even slices of watermelon, beer is not enough of a pull for women. The Pakistani beer vendors did not look like an organised cartel so I guess I could break the ranks with my non competitive alternative. Wonder why Pakistaini in Barcelona? Maybe there is a cartel after all and the North Africans (on Italian beaches for example) lost out. And you’re happy, primarily because it’s still 27 degrees.
I think we’ve corrupted our male friends to the joys of holidaying with a couple of women. This makes it easier for them to chat up the topless locals and other tourists because our female presence meant they were not automatically lonely saddoes on the lookout for fun. Am sure they missed their actual girlfriends at home when later in the evening the chats and exchanged numbers failed to translate into rendez vous but still, the thrill of expectations must have been enough. That’s cause for reflection. There were real g/friends waiting though not aware of room sharing arrangements and one at least was not told D. was in Barcelona, which explains (perhaps) why he never took his shirt/hat/trousers off to get the easiest tan possible? Or perhaps the quality of available topless beach woman kind of shamed him a bit? I don’t know about you, but 30something is far too soon for guys to lose the six pack and acquire the handles and bellies. I did suggest they switch to vodka but they like their beer too much.
For our part, I stared for a long time at a young man who had gone into the see in white undies and was preening for the benefit of his boyfriend on the beach. But I wasn’t really looking … No mothers or fathers of small children playing in view of this specimen seemed incensed either. They truly are more relaxed on the continent. Fact. The trendy Barcelona guide we picked up (nice red leather cover) also had a fat section on sex and partner swapping clubs/bars, but we had no time for these or the city nudist beach. Yep, just, like, there for you to stumble on rather than banished far away as they’d do here presumably.

ps. the twisty coloured plastic craze is called scubidu (spelt in however many variations you can think of). Read about it in the Telegraph (on airplane, that's my excuse, same for Mail and Hello) and so it must be at least six months old and pretty much over.

13 June - are 22 year olds as far as africa?

Out with Katia and her friends after an art gallery opening. Realise am invisible to 30-35 year olds.
The next section up also steer clear away, like being 40 something is a disease you can catch and they don’t know they are infected too. In fact, men are generally more in denial than women. It never ceases to annoy me how if you reverse the m/f picture they seem so deluded. In dating website the older than 50 are forever capping the age of the females they are prepared to date at something like 35! As if we didn’t have any objections to ‘old cock’ (loved a recent episode of Nip/Tuck where some twenty something woman tells playboy Christian who’s shaking the keys to his BMW and declares ‘I’m a plastic surgeon’ like it’s some great job- that she has no objections to cock, just doesn’t like old cock).

Perversely the 20 something are quite open to interact. What do they see? Must ask one or two. Do they feel safe? Like with some version of their parents and favoured aunties? Or do they think ‘No way is she going to turn me down or if she does she won’t do it in that vicious way that my contemporaries have which can reduce me to dust.’We are in a bar with music and they are all sitting down drinking and happily ignoring the soundtrack (David Bowies China Girl for example, we are in what I call eurotrash safe zone or maybe truly there are marketing companies that test what music makes you drink more and compile CDs accordingly). But they all get up to dance to ‘Everybody’s kung fu fighting’. How come it’s cheese for me and they, who were born twenty years later don’t find it so? I personally want to die if I hear ‘By the rivers of Babylon’ or at least have to leave the venue. Anyway, we can still find topics to talk about with the 22 year olds but any younger…16 is probably is as far from us as Africa. Not just Africa the continent, but some lost path in a forest in the Congo. Those of us who don’t have kids or relatives of this age, truly lack the words to communicate. Or even if parents… don’t have them in any case. Is this why parents drink a lot of wine? Who drinks more, the parents or my single friends? Not sure if expanding waistlines can be used as a guide on this.

11 June - will & the opening of envelopes

Joys of websites part...1. Once every few years (ok, months) I google names of people I knew (if I still know them now it stands to reason that I am fairly up to date with what they are doing) so found company website of an ex boyf. which has a forum page which reads like an online blog giving precise details of events ‘he’ will be attending and reviews of such. Which is marvellous as it makes it a perfect solution to the how best to avoid him problem. If he had stalker exes however, it would work against him of course to be so precise in what he will be attending (exhibitions, theatre, clubs, gigs, industry lectures etc).

The forum is all written in the royal ‘we’ and yes, he now can count on some underlings in his no doubt zany and upbeat coloured office in Soho, but he’s always gone to the opening of an envelope so he’ll be going along with the underlings no doubt and only he would enjoy the time consuming task of writing the column in the first place. This also mentions what he’s currently listening to (ahhh, it’s like we’re still together… though he never mentions the Paramount channel and Seinfeld (not trendy I guess). Were most of our laughs comedy induced I now wonder). And most (or least) surprisingly, he seems to have taken up knitting. Which, if you didn’t know it, is a big male trend now he tells us. In his marketing world, I have to point out, a trend is what Londoners who notoriously are easily bored, can start with relative ease as we have all those small enclaves of, er, loners who aspire to trendiness and so will invent something different and often - being trendy allows you not to pay for your drinks in various parts of town, Notting Hill, Shoreditch etc. you know it already.

I have yet to see a male knitter, but saw a family recently (ie. with dad), at a sidewalk café’ and all busy threading those coloured plastic strands into useless ‘things’ you can tag to your keys, phone, luggage. This focussing activity was probably embraced by the kids at school who couldn’t get the original anti-bullying or anti-racism rubber bands the whole country is sporting. Funnily enough I gave one (of the rubber bands, not the other plastic thingie) to a friend’s daughter in another country recently, aiming to put her at the forefront of trendiness in her school, but I miscalculated her interest in forging that role for herself. She said she didn’t want it.
I am sure I did something similar with beads/or other stuff when I was 12 and before you scream, no it wasn’t macrame’ though and my father certainly did not contribute to the activity. So I guess times have a-changed. Now, let me check what Ex is doing this week….

8 June - mozart & genius

Read an article on Mozart and geniuses in general which sort of accounted for their extaordinariness by a) the environment they grew up in - for example, did you know that Einstein’s family already contained scientists and so on? - and b) the extreme amount of hours of practice in the chosen (by their pushy parents) field that they were made to do.
Mentally I tot up on an average week the number of hours spent fiddling in shops, touching fabrics, scanning shelves, moving items about, searching for the elusive price tag, turning it around so I can read the price etc. Multiply this by the type of shops: clothes shops, shoe shops, bags, accessories, furniture, food, bookshops, toiletries and make-up counters and vitamins and medicines and jewellery shops and add to this the quota of irrelevant (to my lifestyle) shops I still check out for no reason: baby clothing, DIY, gardening. It becomes frightening. All those hours...
If I had started searching for a cure for cancer at 6 years old, I have no doubt I’d have found it by now. It also makes sense of my frustration at expecting to become a decent horse rider by just doing a 1 hour class per week and not every week either or expecting to learn snowboarding in the first two days of a skiing holiday (so that you can do it for the remaining 3 or 4). It’s pretty impossible and there I am crying tears of frustration ‘cause I can’t ‘get it’. I bet young Mozart cried buckets by comparison and he probably got beaten up to.

2 June - blackpool rocks

Well, it was a typical bank holiday and instead of flying off to Europe, for once I went to a beach town in the UK… Blackpool. I was curious to see the future ie. life as a pensioner as I guess I’ll be limited in my spatial wanderings and perhaps will have to make do with train journeys or even coach journeys considering I don’t have pension provisions to take me to Barbados for example and coach travel is cheaper. I came away thinking that the future is not too bad as an old biddy, the plentiful ones in Blackpool seemed happy enough to watch floor shows and crooners at the hotel (though the repertoire includes Madonna, she’s no longer that cutting edge) eat ‘tea’ at 6.30 to 7.30 and go moderately crazy on the fruit machines. They also seem happy to fall asleep in chairs in the lobby and I guess they can eat as many cakes as they want (unless the GP says ‘no’).
I am not sure how people from the upper classes were in Blackpool on Bank Holiday w/e but the middle and lower classes seemed to be out in force with entire families and having a good time. The weather was changeable but what can you do? It’s always like that. One taxi driver told me that the locals go on holiday to ... Devon (he must have a fantasy about the weather there being that much better but I doubt it. Coast line prettier for sure.

Of course … I sort of ruined the ‘life at 65’ projection exercise because I was meeting with a younger lover (24) and so found myself dancing at the Walkabout to horrid tunes like Ghostbusters which sound perfect though in between the more up to date Beyonces and co. We then proceeded to go clubbing elsewhere and whilst the elders were at bingo hall (or maybe not, don’t think those are open till 3am) I encountered the other visitors to the town ie. the hen parties and their followers. Stands to reason that in a pack of pretty drunk girls/women scantily dressed, there should be rich pickings for guys/men if they hang around long enough. I certainly found that my gaze was met and held on several occasions and that simply does not happen in London. By local standards I was not too undressed but for once decided on a when in Rome moment and went out without a coat, with bare legs and midriff and w/o a handbag. And believe me, it was bitter!! But liberating. Sort of made easier by the hotel being across the road from the club. The 24 year old was a gem of a gent buying me drinks, proffering cigs and I walked home with a plastic rose. Aahhh. I further was able to notice something that was probably unremarkable way back when I was the same age. The boy (is it patronising to refer to him this way? I hope not) drank approximately 18 double vodkas and coke + a few beers but a) he wasn’t drunk, b) he made perfect sense and c) was able to perform. Call me venial but up to the 3am return I was considering that the 9pm interlude before we went out may be the only one I got for the night (oh forgot, we had started with champagne, so add that to the mix). Remarkable. I texted a 40 something male friend and he wistfully replied that those were the days…

The next day we were truly pensioners as hotels have this nasty habit of wanting the room back at 10am or so. No amount of I’ll pay extra or book for tonight got them to change this (they were booked up) and so several hours were spent on deckchairs (the moment you stepped out of the windbreaker gizmo it was freezing) watching not a lot going on apart from the donkeys. We talked about his relationships and refreshingly he only had 1 or 2 to mention. I must admit I have accumulated many more but felt no obligation to discuss. Other alternatives for a snooze were getting on the tram to the end of the line and back, going to a movie, breaking into a car or falling asleep in the TV room back at the hotel (a good choice in the end, we closed the door, pulled the curtains and had the Simpson on low, nobody who peeked in dared disturb this little picture of cosiness).
Roller coasters were not a good idea at this point… and neither did we fancy the fruit machines again. We spent approx £150 in order to get back… £145 or £155 depending on our respective approximations - I say we lost, he says we won and this may be a very male thing, the need to win or the need not to walk away when you are losing but keep going. The speed at which it all happens is pretty staggering and doesn’t bode well for my Las Vegas week later on in the year. I’d need several thousands to be entertained for a few consecutive hours. I could arrange for the 24 year old to come down and school me and my Vegas trip girlfriends in poker and other games but I think I want to be the only one in the Demi and Ashton fantasy.