28 November - Peter & Pirelli

Drink at the Sanderson with Peter who’s been to Paris for the launch of the Pirelli calendar. As you do, when you can take clients to it and so some huge bank you work for foots the bill presumably. Though he could afford it anyway. What's an ED at Morgan Stanley get? a million or more? And what a let down it was! It was during the Paris riots and so the venue had been switched to a …huge room carpeted in black. Am sure the event organisers would never dream of describing their venue so simply but a giant room it was. I don’t like them either, nowhere to go, circulate, change the scenery, hope the next room yields a better vibe and so on.
I asked about the models and well, a few supermodels were there. Sadly not his favourite, Gisele, but J-Lo and Kate Moss yes and others. However, as I guessed, the vast majority of guests were male. Why would a woman go to the Pirelli launch just for fun? In tables of 10 or so, with possibly one female per table. As he was with work guests, guess what they talked about? Work. Boring.
The presentation was great, photos projected on giant screen, music and so on, but all was over by 11pm and as there was no chance to get near J-Lo shielded behind 7 huge bodyguards etc and the other supermodels were only to be found at the table of people like Formula 1 owners and so on, and there was no disco or other activity… he left and so did everybody else. Oh and his calendar got pinched. It was v. v. cold and he couldn’t be arsed to go to a club so he thought ‘Hey, I’ll have a drink back at the hotel’. Only to find that the majority of guests was in the same hotel and so the bar was a replica of the cocktail reception a few hours earlier. Again, notable for the absence of models or even Russian prozzies. Presumably the management of top hotels tries to moderate the influx. So he went to bed. Without even the calendar to er.. get excited over. Clearly he was too confident that the event would yield some beauty he could chat up etc or he'd have sensibly organised some entertainment for himself. There are concierges for this no?
I didn’t ask how much the whole thing had cost but just thought I’d let all Pirelli dreamers out there that reality as it often does, is a bit of a let down. For me the useful information was that it’s Kate who does it for him. Surrounded as he usually is by the likes of Mediterranean beauties a’ la Monica Bellucci, it’s telling that he dreams of the opposite body type. Mmmhhh. He does fantasise about being taken by a girl with a strap on so it should be a boyish girl rather than a sex mama like Monica…what's he doing having a drink with me then. Ha ha, yes me and Bellucci look the same, if you should ask.

26 November - Howard

Well, sometimes you’re sensible and you think all you’re going to do on a Friday is read aloud a few hymns to your friend who’s going to get married – she’s having her trial make up session and you’re sitting on the edge of her bed reciting poetry and stuff, so she can hear how it will sound and make a choice. Then you’re going to see a movie with a new date and you get annoyed because it portrays some older guy who’s a version of the several ones you’ve met in the last ten years or so. You get annoyed because you know that even if you made them watch this several times over, they still wouldn’t get it that this is how they’re going to wake up age 55 and will have missed it, love, life, whatever it is. Ok enough of the cryptic stuff, it was Broken Flowers with Bill Murray. The good thing was that date seem to think it was not his goal in life to be depressed and visiting ex girlfriends in his 50's. Nice man.

Then you go for a drink at a still fashionable private club where your friend Polly has texted you that the name of the guest to use there is Howard Marks but you think it’s just a joke on her part. But you walk in and there she is, sat with the very same patron saint of students activities around the world. The thing about using a full page close up of yourself on your book cover is that… you can never say ‘no it’s not me’ when fans come and say something to you. And it’s amazing how many fans a former drug smuggler can have, but if he’s as nice as Howard then it’s easy. I wanted to take the guy home and not for any other reason than feed him, give him somewhere to sleep and just listen to his accent – Yorkshire by way of many, many other places. He didn’t need any of that, he paid for our drinks and food in fact and he had a nice hotel room in the club thank you very much. So later, we were in the not so surreal situation of being in a room with Howard and I had a chuckle at the following exchange ‘How long are you going to take making that?’ asks Howard. The woman could hardly answer this question as she was so gurning and busy starting yet another sentence to tell me a story, but never finishing said sentences. Don’t you hate cocaine? Like the mug that I am, I kept hoping there would be a punchline somewhere, but it never came and I kept smiling encouragingly at her. A few minutes go by and Howard decides to take charge of making it. So he takes it from the woman and asks ‘Did you put enough in?’. She gives him a lovely smile and says ‘Well I did, but you know, you’re Howard Marks, I don’t know if that’s enough for you.’ Given that at nearly 4am nothing much seemed to have happened since we went up there at 2am, myself and Toph left Howard in charge of 8 women (some were his next room neighbours), good disco mummies all of them. They had wasted no time, the moment our collective bodies sprawled on Howard’s bed, to try and establish if Toph and I were there ‘together’. Much as I’m not sure about it either, it felt slightly stark to hear his even replies, that no, we were not. I nearly said ‘Why not, dontcha want to?’
I don’t think much happened after we left, except for Polly dropping her phone in the loo.

22 November - Dylan

Sorry about so much music related stuff on this blog, but so many other people discuss movies and I hardly make it to the cinema.
Off to Bob Dylan and am on virgin territory here, though swotted listening to various albums over two days to get acclimatised. Yes, read the bio and watched the Scorsese docs but I never remember any songs. Me and the Dear John guy stand a little awkwardly. Yes the letter was sent and a lovely reply received, merely acknowledging that I was right but not proffering any disagreement on its content. Sad to see you go but that’s the way it goes sort of thing. So it was hard for both perhaps not to lean into the other’s body, hold hands and exchange the odd kiss. But we manage. There is no undercurrent of desire, like it’s evaporated so it’s relatively easy. For my part I’ve flipped a switch. If we were in love this would take on a whole different meaning. Dylan is one of his favourite artists, he can sing the lyrics to many of the songs, tells me the titles, is majorly excited by the tunes on offer and it would go down in the couple history book as the night we went to Dylan and Lisa ‘got him’ finally – via making hip again a la White Stripes and now she’s my woman, she gets Dylan! Sort of echoes of ‘Diner’ if you wish. Funny how he’d never get Madonna.
I choose this opportunity to say I’ going to Duran Duran at Christmas, with my gay friend Justin and we’ll dress up and he’ll sing along to Wild Boys and I’ll sing along to Girls on Film – maybe Justin can imagine Boys On Film... Dear John says he never got DD, though had one of their singles. I tell him that he wasn’t old enough to get them. He says ‘I was 15’ and I say ‘And I was old enough to shag one of them’. Though never did anything about it. Bit too wan for my taste. I say you like blues and stuff, while my route into music is via Bowie. He says he loves Bowie too, but turns out it’s Low, not the Hunky Dory/Aladdin Sane dress up version. Our differences are documented and sorted. However, I think it was good to mention DD, he’ll have gone home happily reassured that no, we didn’t have a future.
NB. Of course I’m deliberately making this into a silly thing. Of course relationships don’t rest on these flimsy foundations – at least not past your teenage years! Anyway, I also pointed out that I’d seen by then the first Eurythmics gig, v. electronic /v. dark and so I was not a fashion puppet into DD’s frilly shirts.

18 November - i tunery

A small brainwave about lovers, boyfriends, partners. A g/friend just rang, frustrated. She’s getting married, all has been organised by her - with some of my help - in a very short period of time. We’re talking weeks not months. So much for all those shelves of bridal magazines at newsagents, I knew we didn’t need them. They are just candy for women whose obsession is their wedding, the biggest event they’ve ever organised. Mmmhh not so for us. We could produce the Oscars and I’m not just self-aggrandising here. Going ahead in 2 weeks. Complex logistics. And virtually all she’s asked the groom-to-be to do is put invites in envelopes, stick addressed labels on them. He’s managed to do that wrong. Inserted invites upside down, stuck labels not in the centre etc. Hellloooo?? The man runs – admittedly with his sisters, so he has help – a million pound earning fashion company.

It made me think how some of us women are just so used to dealing with g/friends and expect the men to communicate/act in the same way. For example matching a fifteen minute monologue about what we did last night or detailed explanation of how to cook a certain dish. But this is how they communicate, very basically. No, fear not, I’m not about to embark on a “We say this, they understand that and vice versa”, and how we multi-task and they do not - unless it’s firing a gun and running at the same time etc, but just about all they can cope with is nerd. I offer an example below - though many thanks to this guy for his info re ipods. One day when I have …oh about 60 hours free whilst my wife does the laundry, cooks, gardens, takes the kids to school etc. I’ll definitely do this. I like a tidy ipod library as much as the next man.

Ps. His itunes page starts with several tracks by Weird Al Yancovich. Yep, we women listen to that a lot too. It’s soooo funny. NOT. So, many thanks to cyclingroo@blogspot.com

* * * Here goes * * *
As I type these words, I am overwhemed with a sense of accomplishment. OK, it really isn't a big accomplishment. And it's not like I've done anything important. But most of us know how good we feel when we've cleaned out the garage or gone through the attic. With that in mind, I'll let you know that I feel satisfied/content because I've gone through the musical attic, dusted off all the old boxes, sorted their contents, and re-arranged them in nice, neat rows - I've cleaned up my musical metadata.

Over the years, I've collected quite a few CD's. I've ripped MP3's files from these CD's for the past five years. And in the last few months, I've converted some old cassettes into MP3 files. I've even spent the time assembling album art wherever I could. But I hadn't ever been thorough in cleaning up my MP3 metadata. But last Sunday, I got motivated to start the cleanup. And what I thought would take a few hours is finally complete - after a few days.

So what did I do and how did I do it?
· I wanted to make sure that I had appropriate title/album/date/track# on all my MP3's. So I did a little research and found Musicbrainz. I'd seen and used this tool about a year ago. But at that time, the tag repository wasn't very complete. Indeed, I couldn't match ~25% of my collection. Boy, things have changed. I started with ~3500 songs. And Musicbrainz properly identified ~97% of my collection.
· For those files Musicbrainz couldn't identify, I went out to FreeDB and imported the album information into Musicbrainz. This data, combined with the audio "fingerprints "from my files (called TRM's by Musicbrainz), allowed me to create new album entries for about twenty previously uncataloged albums.
· I got rid of twenty or thirty "dead" tracks (15 seconds or less with no real content) that had ended up in my collection.
· I found a few mislabeled tracks on Musicbrainz, so I submitted "edits" for moderation/inclusion. I'm still waiting for these to get approved by the original submitters.
· I updated all the ID3 tags on my exisitng MP3 collection with the tags from Musicbrainz. I allowed Musicbrainz to rename all of my files. That way, I'd have good, clean file names. BTW, this meant that my entire iTunes library needed to be rebuilt.
· I found out that iTunes renames MP3 files on import. That's not a new revelation. But I didn't understand which check boxes affected which operations - until now. After renaming all my files with MusicBrainz, I cleared out iTunes and re-imported the files. And iTunes dutifully renamed the files for me. Arrrrrggggghhhhh!
· So I got the chance to rename the files (once again) using Musicbrainz. I then reloaded the data into iTunes. Just to make a clean start, I deleted all the songs from iTunes and started from scratch. I lost my playlists and the artwork that wasn't in ID3 tags, but the MP3 collection (and filenames) are now what I want/expect.
· I tried out the iTunes Album Artwork Locator (by Zelek Software). After using Musicbrainz, this tool made it really simple to identify the appropriate album art. But the free download version is very limited in what you can change. Fortunately, iTunes Art Importer (from YVG Software) is a wonderful tool. Using these tools (and a few web searches), I was able to find album art for all of my albums. Yippee!
· But I didn't stop there. I wanted my iPod to also be as tidy as my iTunes directory. So I cleared my iPod and reset it to factory defaults. I then reloaded my entire library. The easiest way to do this is to use the iPod firmware update utility and its Restore funtion. The whole process to reload the iPod took a few hours.
After all of this, my digital music cabinet is now labeled and sorted quite nicely. Too bad the actual CD's aren't as neatly sorted and stacked!

16 November - Madonna

Madonna at Koko So VIP daaahling. So many old faces, so many memories in that place. The Clash for a start. Music Machine as it was then, Psychedelic Furs, Adam and the Ants and many more. By the time Madonna played in ’83 it was Camden Palace. At the time it felt like I was there every Thursday for Club for Heroes after it moved there from smaller premises at the Barracuda in Baker St., it was like walking into a bar were you know everybody at or wish you did. The uber cool people, Steve and Rusty… we spent an inordinate amount of time spying each other’s clothes. I was never one of the too fashionable people. Deliberately so I thought - an observer with a journalistic mission rather than a shop assistant wannabe. Oh I could be cruel. And I was there for lots of gigs in between though the only one I remember right now was Grace Jones blowing us away at her album launch…
Funnily enough in her interview on Aol Madonna says when she came to London in ’83 she saw how much style mattered to us and she was totally in awe of Boy George. Blimey! We knew him! Like you know, to talk to! My friend Christine was his biggest fan even after I told her he slept with Jon Moss.

Dear Madonna, sorry I didn’t think much of you when I came to see you with Francis and Paula. You had that netty black vest, the leggings under the skirt, lots of rubber bracelets, flat dancing boots and short hair and big hoop earrings but you were a little too round for a dancer, your dance steps were crap and your two male dancers nothing special and your voice weak and all nasally and your tunes nothing memorable. The audience was sparse and we stood midway in front of the stage, arms crossed. And I was jealous because despite the low key quality of your appearance, Francis was mesmerised. He was staring at your boobs I think. He declared you’d go far and Paula and I laughed and bitched ‘What does he know? He manages Dead or Alive for god’s sake, the lamest of the Liverpool bunch’.

How wrong was I heh? Well you know, if you thought Siouxsie Sioux or Kate Bush had a great voice you couldn’t but pity Madonna doing ‘Lucky Star’. But work hard and you get somewhere kids. That’s the lesson.

Coincidentally Michael Clark had a new show ‘OO’ at the Barbican. I didn’t go and see it but there you go, another former wild child who according to a review “drew a studiously chic crowd, many of whom looked ready for a night of nostalgia clubbing. Most of the people I talked to spoke of growing up with Clarke’s work, and reminisced fondly about his appearances with dildos, corsets and chainsaws in the 1980s. (Madonna wasn’t the only one) And there were whoops when Clarke, dressed in luminous white and wearing a safety pin in his ear, bounced on stage to take a bow. The production juxtaposed OO, a new work accompanied by punk rock music from Iggy Pop and the Wire with O, a reworking of Clarke’s 1994 interpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s Apollo.”I have fond memories of Clark’s shows. One major boyfriend took me to it as a first date kind of thing. Aaahh Ahh, should have gone.

12 November - tags

Yes, am far too longwinded for the world of blogs. Some of my entries go on far too long. So here's a short one.
There's certainly horror in the world but mine is pretty calm and steady (thanks to living in an old western world democracy) so ... was trying to come up with bad stuff and the only appalling moment I can think of right now is: realising I've walked around for ages, sat in a bar, bought stuff in shops etc, and the stupid ID tag from my job is still hanging from my neck. Don't think anyone noticed but even if they did, nobody took the opportunity to bring a smile to my face by saying something like 'Hey Lisa, you ok today?' just to watch my 'How do you know my name?' face. Nope. In LA we're not.

10 November - Ben

Lunch with Ben. Too funny or a sign of the amoral world some of us live in. He’s found himself a slave girl on the internet: Luise, a 23 year old who works in HR and who claims she can’t ask her boyfriend to do certain stuff to her. A bit like guys say they can’t ask the wife for a nal or golden showers or something. So he’s been quite bold and asks her to do tasks, and send photos via mobile phone to prove that she has. Some imaginative things… like before they actually met he’d asked her to write on her own body some words he gave her and send the photos, which she dutifully did. We had a work-like lunch at the Fishmarket with me looking at pictures he subsequently took when they had sex and had loaded onto his work laptop -he has a ten year old boy at home and we all know those ones can get into any nook and cranny of dad’s computer even if the wife can’t. We do this in between mouthfuls of risotto. Very civilised. And pretty explicit they were. Some nice bruises on her ass. But Ben’s favourite photo is one that just shows the hem of her mini-dress skimming her thigh so in his extreme world of accessing porn from work pretty much on a regular basis, the image he likes is the one that doesn’t show anything. Or maybe that’s because though Luise is fit and taut, she’s just a touch bigger than he likes? I personally think the boyfriend is well in on this or partly. Maybe it’s just a ruse to have things bought? Maybe not, it’s not like Ben’s getting her things that are out of her reach, simple stuff, s ex toys mainly. I had to laugh many times. How he used his daughter’s horsewhip on one occasion (daughter is not 9 yet), which must give him some private frisson as he takes her to lessons at the w/end or how he left Louise tied up for 20 minutes once. He was trying to play it as a ‘I won’t come back, and leave you here all tied up’ game, but of course had to, the man has a train to Essex to catch eventually! I asked ‘What did you do for 20 mins?’. ‘Phoned the wife’ came the deadpan reply.
Then he told me the harness thingy he bought for £70 actually came apart. And that it’s not easy to fuck anyone if they are tied up wrist to ankle but that the constriction is very useful if you’re going down on her. The fact that she can’t wiggle much makes it easier for the guy to stick to the target. That was definitely useful information I shall treasure. Oh and I saw a toy I didn’t know in the pictures, some double ender thing in a vile shocking pink colour. Then he got all imagination firing at the thought I may get involved. He quickly came up with several scenarios. I just licked my dessert spoon a bit longer than I normally would thinking ‘In your dreams darling’.
The thing is that six months ago he had a big scare. Some woman he met was a journalist and managed to have him photographed and printed a story in the News of the World with a suitably screaming headline ‘Women, this could be your husband’ type thing. His face was obscured but he had a distinctive coat on (some original stripe on the sleeves) and that made him identifiable. He had an excruciating week or so waiting for someone to tell his wife at the school gates. It’s ok her not reading the News of the World but plenty of other people do! And in fact another mother dropped some not so oblique hints to him when he picked up the kids. However, he feigned no knowledge and the thing has gone away so the fact that he’s become bolder in his game pursuits is slightly puzzling. I thought it was only celebrities that have some subconscious desire to be found out and are so stupid and get regularly caught (George Michael, Jude Law, plenty of politicos) but no, man from Essex does it too. I mean, the perils of internet communication. He could leave the computer on the train or something. I said half in jest ‘Send me some of these pics of Louise’ and he did! I guess he thinks so long as he’s not in them what would link the two? I did advise him to be a bit more careful as James Bond he’s not. I mean, he uses pseudonyms etc. but that’s not much use if he then pays for hotel bills or lunch with his normal credit card sporting his rather posher name. Doh! Men are stupid! We’ll do lunch again in a few months. Am sure by then he’ll try and interest me in the only other step he can go to from here ie. the threesome. So predictable.

7 November - xmas slags

The newspapers have started with advice on how to survive the Xmas season of office work parties. I wonder if in other countries they expend so much ink on this or if it’s just here in the UK, where people get shit faced on drink. Not that they need the work party to do it. I could see shit faced people any night of the week if I bothered to stay in a bar long enough.
Oh and apparently women (I think it’s mostly women?) are prepared to have a one night stand if it saves them the money for a taxi home! Maybe this only applies to suburban dwellers? My taxi budget is usually £30 or so, if it starts costing more than going to Heathrow then I make myself brave the night bus, but night buses are not so bad if you have something to read and are not shit faced. You seriously could be hallucinating otherwise, plus it’s best you’re sick on the shoes of the prince who’s giving you the ride cum one night stand home frankly than making my bus smell. I have to consider that at least in Thailand they do it for a washing machine or a new fridge, not a ride. Ok maybe not just once…ie. "I buy you washing machine, you give me 50 bjs, deal?". Or maybe a washing machine in Thailand is the same price as a cab to Sheen or one of those places past the North or South circular? Maybe it works the other way round too ie. I could pick up some handsome man with the promise of a taxi home? And breakfast next morning? Actually, revise that, what am I thinking, men don’t need any form of persuasion usually, just say ‘You! Over here, now.’

5 November - Seth & the bohemians

Seth was round the house the other night, with phone pics. of his baby son to show me. Very cute, but as yet indistinguishable from any other Caucasian infant. I wasn’t allowed to see pics. of the mother though heard how she’s soooo in love with being a mum and happy to get up every 2 hours and how she’s given birth in 3 hours and lost all the weight already after 2 weeks or so. After that I avoided asking any questions for fear of choking on my food with envy. By and large we avoided talking about that anyway or his arrangements to look after said new family.
I was telling him about the literary festival I went to in Deia/Majorca recently, Tertuja, the sister festival to the Hay-on-Wye one, and he declared I am the most artistic person he knows, in fact bohemian. I objected to this and said English bohemia seems just a byword for not cleaning the corners of your rooms or beating the rugs often enough. Am I wrong? I am not bohemian at all. I work everyday for a monthly regular salary… that automatically excludes me from the taking a stroll, having a coffee, staring out of the window for inspiration type thing and not having time to tidy up or air my clothes from the smell of the cigarettes the bohemians smoke. What does he know? I replied saying he’s the only member of the medical profession I’ve ever known and his idea of bohemia may be as skewered as mine.
A few nights later I decided to drop by one of the Dear John’s letter recipient’s usual haunts in Soho. He’s out of the country and I thought it a good time to check on his life without me in it. No sightings of Tracey Emin or any Turner or Whitbread prize winners am afraid. Only 5 people plus the barman whose appalling spectacles and grey skin do not endear him to me at all and vice versa as he asks me to sign the visitor’s book rather than assume I’m a regular he hasn’t spotted so far – I mean he doesn’t work every night does he? Or maybe he does and lives upstairs perhaps. Eavesdropping - easy since the place is no larger than my bedroom -I gleaned a couple were locals planning a birthday drink of another Soho stalwart down the road (French House or Gerrys), one was an Irish painter just in town and a little later an old eastern European man turned up with a younger far eastern architect woman who had appeared to be a man to me. The bar is unbelievably bohemian perhaps in that it’s depressingly badly lit with smoked out décor and sad dirty Irish bar colours, that green that goes with these kind of places, forlorn furniture, assorted pictures or posters of old shows etc. Ok, so it makes a change from anything around there, I wouldn’t go and have a drink in All Bar One either believe me, but having been there mostly when the places is hosting some kind of launch or event, this quiet Monday at 8pm was truly a downer, apart from vintage Primal Scream on the stereo. I had to reflect on how Dear John likes to go to the same two places in town where he’s guaranteed a chat with someone he knows or gets to know there or the barman, whereas I love anything that’s new and different and would rather kill myself than be coming to the same bar for YEARS. Or perhaps I expect that in Paris such a place would be less run down, and Beatrice Dalle and Henry Bernard Levy would lit it with their interesting faces. And I have no desire to talk to people who are only here perhaps because it’s warmer than their studio in the East End or because they can run a tab. So er, despite what Seth thinks, it’s not my milieu. And the Dear John letter is kind of apt. I left at 9pm having become now one of only 4 punters. Any longer and I might have gone blind.

1 November - teenage blogs

Oh boy, I may be getting a touch bored by blogs. Have checked one mentioned by a friend and it gets 1m hits, clearly because every entry is blatantly writing about sex which I don't object to at all, far from it, but it's somehow short of being that interesting and we've read it all before though, admittedly the fact I'm ten years older than that blogger means that surely there must be readers ten years younger than her who have yet to try certain things out for themselves and reading about them is stimulating enough for now. I have indeed discovered a couple of objects she mentions which are on my Xmas list now but aside from that I sort of regretted printing so much of it to read and the trees that went with it.
Thing is, she seems to have blog envy too and in an earlier posting mentions how not coming top of the blogs at somme award made her double her efforts to get more hits ie more key sex words are mentioned etc etc. I told my friend that Anais Nin it is not (she knew anyway) or Henry Miller or anything that had the benefit of being based on the life of someone who was extraordinary and also drew from the company of extaordinary people. This blogger is a regular person, not that well educated even -not that this is necessarily a drawback, only for snobs like me perhaps. Ok, back in the drawer with that knife. I went trawling for other stuff and found the blogs of a few teenagers and thought oh my god, it could be worse, I could be a teenager now, pregnant or near as, one that hasn't come to grips with verbs -'have runed away' is certainly a new one on me or with 'oh what to do in life?' questions. I am going to paste some of their entries below because... they cheered me up no end in that phew, what am I whingeing about when I whinge about me? type way. Here they are:

well I am 16 going on 17, iam a Junior at Jordan High school.
Iam tall skinny with kinda long hair.My life here in watts its not that bad like people thing it is.Theres nothing uncommon going on in here that is not happening somewere else, but like watts is considered a city full of poverty and crime they look at us like were the worst city ever.Well yea theres alot of young pregnacies alot of my homegirls have left school to take care of their newborns and many have runed away with their boyfriends, but they are many girls like me
that have other kind of hopes.I want to graduate then go on to college and do something with my life. Not everybody has the same intentions in life here in watts.

am here lying in my bed, not knowing what to do with my life I am stuck in my own world not knowing how to get out. All these questions run through my head all these little voices in my head, in my head telling me to do this, do that, go here, no go there, what should I do?!? My time is running out, im panicing what can I do?!?, WHAT CAN I-
The question is......How do I start?

Or this

fourty-three
sorry i havent made a post lately. i was grounded from thursday to yesterday for not cleaning my room. thats why i missed my last three posts. sorry.
anyway... the new quarter is one week in and so far its going well. my teachers are happy because i havent missed an assignment yet.

thirty-nine
nothing interesting today....... hopefully tommorrow

thirty-eight
First post of the new quarter. it is our 38th day of school. Halloween was yesterday. it was awsome, i helpped my friend escort his sister aroung to trick or treat and ended up getting candy myself. i went as Lil' slugger from the anime Paranoia Agent, which is a great show. i had an awesome break, i went to texas to see my dad and step-family, and i went to a Cowboys game on sunday. ti was sweet.

28 October - puss in boots & sex pistols

Wearing new musketeer style boots, very Halloween or Gunpowder plot. DKNY, very high. I feel like I’m a 70 year old scared to slip and break my hips as I slowly walk down the approach to my station. It’s wet too and the wrong leaves are on the walkway naturally. Thank god for the banister. If this is how those old people feel, god, don’t let me get to that point. Truly, having to edge along slowly, taking forever to cross roads, get on transport. Oh no! or getting fat as one can’t get out of the house often enough due to how difficult it is to walk. I can’t bear thinking about it.
As I get to work and discuss the ‘puss in boots’ boots a colleague gets her ruler out and … they are ‘only’ 4”! Must be something about the constriction of the style. These things are not to be taken lightly though as Sarah Jessica Parker has just snapped a tendon falling off her shoes. I’d rather that happened on a skiing accident than just in any stupid street. At least on the slopes some exciting trip on a fast stretcher down a mountain would ensue. Not that I probably would have time to enjoy given the insane pain snapped tendons give you. So, only 4" yet I felt I was in pole dancing shoes or something. Alison is about to start her intermediate course and has purchased some clear Perspex and gold ones. Very stylish compared to the lurid red vinyl ones she had. Still, those have a few inches of platform so don’t feel so vertiginous. However, the boots would look best with the ‘collar’ turned up and a mini skirt, which is sadly below my age allowance. Indeed as I describe them to an old friend on the phone he asks me if I’m wearing a short skirt with them and I have to puncture that little fantasy, plus he’s a friend so he’s not allowed to form any exciting pics in his head. Of course one should do it the Moss way and have jeans tucked in but anyone not of her proportions looks stupid. What to do? I know, purchase frock coat, which is not in keeping with this year’s military theme (that and the Russian one). Anyway they are lovely soft and with a leather bow tied at the front of the ankle. Adam Ant would nick them off me I’m sure.

Talking of which, it was 30 years ago that Bazooka Joe, his band, had the Sex Pistols as support at the infamous St Martin’s School of Art first gig by the protopunks – they were still wearing plimsolls at this point and no Sid Vicious, in fact the Beatles loving Glen Matlock. Anyway, I wasn’t there but my friend Robin was in Bazooka Joe and they were very miffed by the Pistols, and pulled the plug on them. But Adam had seen the future and promptly quit singing with them too! It seems life has been kinder somehow to Robin. Well, not having mental problems probably is an advantage. None of us would recognise Adam /Stuart in the street if we saw him these days. Funny thought that back then I was at school and short of any cash to purchase my DNKY boots - ok £150 down from £600, think about that! I saved £450! But now it’s too late to prance about singing Prince Charming and crossing arms at the wrists above my head, she says wistfully.

20 October - dear john

How long can you keep a Dear John letter in your handbag? Lovingly ‘typeset’ on special vellum paper and signed with the best Pilot ink pen? Yes, a MontBlanc would be more suitable, that shiny patent leather look and the white bonnet, but years of becoming me have taught me that such a pen would be lost within days and that’s unnecessary pain in my view. So far am on day four. My resolve wavers, and also the John in question has not been within my reach – that’s part of the problem – we are not ‘together’ and I don’t want to post it. I want to slip it into his jacket pocket either at the beginning of an evening or so that he finds it the next morning as he saunters off. Very difficult to predict in which state of mind he will be when he reads it.
I once was having a gay old time in LA visiting a friend. I was out of work and with a decent redundancy cheque so technically receptive to her luring suggestions ‘Why don’t you stay here longer? you could do this, that, drive to Acapulco etc’ And I’d replied ‘No, no, what about W?’ The boyfriend at that time who was sending sweet emails containing various versions of ‘Miss you’.
So I landed back and as I was about to launch into an afternoon of let’s get reacquainted with each other type action, but instead I got the speech. Which left me speechless for a few seconds – I had definitely not seen it coming, though strangely had not purchased any over the top presents for him but just some standard ‘have been away’ item – only to blurt out ‘Why didn’t you tell me on the phone, I could have stayed in Santa Monica FOREVER!!!’ and I could tell he was about to reply ‘But that’s not how it’s done, you can’t do it by text or email, it’s cruel, everybody says so’. Which it is, usually. Very bad form indeed, but right then, staring ahead at no job/no man, frankly, a few more weeks of deli/latte/veggie/spiritual eating would have been much better. It was also the beginning of Autumn which in California would have just been SUMMER! The beaches were teaming with surfers. Naturally I can say it was the shock that made me be so superficial, I did get upset afterwards. Then got angry and got all the way through that annoyingly reasonable 'sarah' circle. (er sadness, anger, rage, accpetnance, hope - think, could be wrong, could be sod off, arsehole, rent a cottage, abseil, heal? So yes, I should not worry about how one will receive a Dear John letter. For all I know he may carry a Dear Jane in his pocket as we speak. We could play double bluffing agents of love perhaps?

15 October - julia & the fruit

Lunch with a friend who had a short little anecdote to tell me as she said my blog needs to ligthen up. Here goes, paraphrasing:

"Men are very simple to please. Just offer to do anything they want. Once. This quickly establishes what it is and it may save a lot of time in the future. Or having to lug with you a suitcase full of lingerie, toys, shoes etc. The guy in question liked the shoes I arrived with, but didn’t care that I had higher heels, prettier pairs with me. He also didn’t have the energy or the interest to run through more than 2 outfits from the selection I had thoughtfully put together to please him. He had a thing about fruit but, typical male, went overboard and bought 2 carriers full from Tesco. He kind of got bored after placing a banana here, and a papaya there, oh and a strawberry there. The blueberries clearly were going to make a big mess until I suggested just putting them in a glass, pouring vodka over them and having blueberry vodka drinks. Eating the pomegranate went down well. Both the juice running over me and the texture of the ‘beads’, plus it was just perfectly ripe. I had to stand in the bath to squish the kiwis all over (the Four Season’s beds were just too pristine and fresh to ruin). He had never thought you could mash up avocado and cover your body with it. I gave myself an oil massage as he just watched. This was in the bathroom at this point, again, so all traces of this strange encounter could all be erased away by the strong shower jet. Superb. The bananas got no further use and were chucked, the papaya I ate in the morning.
Oh, and if you pick someone with a high powered pressured job, you may find they have a plane to catch at 6am the next morning so they’re asleep by 11pm. Easy. Though you are left a bit wanting…if the Carmen Miranda thing is not your scene. But, should there be a next time, you could just wave some lychees at him and get him to the point where it takes very few minutes more action on your part."