25 October - Daniel Craig & Me

It's not so far fetched. Love it, London is where it can all so easily happen.
A’s girlfriend has a job to die for. At company that makes the kind of TV drama that always gets great reviews, features top totty, is super stylishly directed in a US fashion sort of way and generally doesn’t put a foot wrong with the critics and public and features some of my favourite actors. John Simm anyone?
Misunderstanding my across table discussion in a crowded, loud gastropub with not so struggling author M and my request ‘Do you want to come to Bond opening night?’ (bad English for 'Do you want to go and see Casino Royale when it opens?') for ‘Do you want to come to Bond premiere?’ J breezely says, 'Should be able to get tickets for that, (she means the PREMIERE!!) and will let you know’.
Won’t happen ever but still, nice to dream. She reckons Daniel may talk to me rather than M. Not sure how she knows his type that well? Or how to take this. Don't remotely look like Sienna or Kate (once stood next to him and Kate at a gig at the Astoria and she truly eclipses all around her, don't know what it is...but she has it) and crucially not as young. She says he's 'naughty' . Oh that would be it then. I have that look too. They always mean filthy mind when they say naughty but to be honest my mind is not that filthy... anymore. But she should know. She’s had that lame Law on the phone asking for a TV part lately and they're at advanced stage of movie directed by Cronenberg and starring the handsomest of The Ring trilogy actors. Work it out, only one stood out in the dark and brooding stakes.
You could say that I’d still prefer John Simm out of that group, but you could also say she’s got to be mega good at her job if she keeps a professional stance at meetings with this lot! And she fancies boyfriend A. more...... aaahhhh. Love.

24 October - 44 & a killer

w/o giving it away ... it was a mouse. It was shocking if not that bloody and perhaps slightly traumatic. Have sublimated it into a tiny bit of prose, hope it's amusing.

At 44 he had never killed before. Marginally younger than him, she had.

Seven hours after his latest birthday was officially over, Toph felt good; the delicious cicchetti starters, tasty mains and sublime red wine ingested at Cecconi’s, (his latest foodie discovery), had generated enough energy for eventful and debauched antics. These were enjoyed, first last night, by the suffused light of the king size candles that his thoughtful friends had bought him, and again half an hour or so earlier in the grey morning light seeping through the makeshift curtain in his bedroom. Whilst incessant rain lashed the window and heralded Autumn, he enjoyed some extra heat before the radio alarm fully woke him up with Radio Four bulletins.
Now Toph was standing in his kitchen wearing only his so called comedy underpants (no, no silly cartoon characters, just a rainbow of 70’s retro coloured stripes) and presiding over a boiling kettle and Sasha, his already suited but not made up girlfriend, who was spooning some honey on toast.

He had a difficult decision to make: how to kill a mouse. Well, at the time he thought he was dealing with only one specimen, when in fact there was no knowing if he was facing a tribe or a solitary commando. The mouse’s presence was an established fact. It had been seen sporadically, but this time he was within reach, hiding behind the toaster. The day had not started well… actually it had, Sasha loved extracting some more of his passion before scooting off to get dressed, but the milk in the fridge had gone sour. This didn’t impact on Sasha as she could easily drink black coffee, but he liked his tea.

As the mouse was cowering in a corner of the kitchen top, behind a giant wooden chopping board and making no sound, Sasha was eating the rest of the toast which she now realised had popped out of the toaster that had served as larder for the mouse, as evidenced by the copious droppings they found when they lifted the appliance and moved it across to the sink. She carried on regardless, she was that kind of person. Always thinking that one day, when the famines would hit the Western world, it was best to have gotten used to not being too delicate about food. ‘We’ll eat anything then’ she predicted, ‘and be grateful’.
‘Aww, he’s only tiny’ she exclaimed now, raising on tiptoe to see the brown little ball shape that the mouse had assumed to camouflage itself. ‘He’s a mouse’ said Toph sternly, ‘they’re dirty!’.
Well, technically no, she thought, they hoover up any food and only leave these minuscule droppings but yes, they’re not supposed to live with us.

The decision was taken unanimously, but Toph implemented it. He was the man, this was his kitchen. Without warning, a mere second after she suggested the chopping board as a weapon, he slammed it hard into the corner.
A small splash of blood splurted upwards on the white tiles. That’s when it hit him that he’d have to clean up and touch the crushed mouse As he stood there motionless after the sudden attack, Sasha turned to him and hugged him. ‘Why are you crying?’ he asked. Sasha answered that her tears were purely a reaction, because the mouse was so tiny and therefore must be young, a mouse kid ‘And it, like anyone else in the world, must have a family who will miss him’ she whimpered into Toph’s shoulder. Plus, she remembered the previous winter, whilst browsing in an antique shop one Saturday, the owner had proffered his pet mouse and she’d touched it and felt its pulse and soft, velvety skin. There was intelligence in his alert features.

As they pondered what to do next, suddenly the mouse’s brother (or friend or mother or father, or girlfriend or landlord – who knows these things), appeared from behind a bottle of olive oil and clearly stunned and panicking tried to run here and there across the cooker. Emboldened by the previous kill, Toph grabbed the largest frying pan and was waiting for this new intruder to stand still on a flat surface so he could be sure that one lunge and one forceful smash would be sufficient to end its life. What they never expected was for this slightly larger mouse to take a giant leap off the counter, launching itself toward them still rooted on the spot by the kitchen door. Toph, naked and shoeless, stepped quickly aside. Sasha levering up one hand on the sink edge and one on the door frame (the kitchen is that narrow) just gathered her legs up in one svelte move. There was no point trying to stamp on the mouse with her boots, it was too fast for her reflexes. Once, in a temple in India, where they worship rats and let them roam freely, she’d walked barefoot but hadn’t the guts to let the mice crawl across her feet as was recommended in order to gain a year (or was it a lifetime?) of good luck., So she’d played a game of sidestepping them and realised then how supernaturally swiftly they run.
This speedy gonzales was now safely ensconced behind the large fridge and they decided to drop the pursuit as they both had to be out of the house oh… ten minutes ago already.

Their gaze turned back to the splash of blood. ‘Perhaps we should leave it there as a warning to others? There must be others for sure’, said Sasha, thinking of guerrilla warfare and no Geneva conventions. But their instinct for re-establishing order prevailed and the natural division of roles followed its path: man kills, woman cleans up. Toph was unsure how to pick up the tiny carcass but Sasha’s previous experience of killing a mouse had been a solitary one. The little bugger in her flat had been eventually caught in one of those inhumane decapitating traps, which were at least better than the glue ones. She had then struggled on how to pick it up not wanting to feel the squishy warmth of the body – she imagined a tumescent penis and didn’t like the picture conjured - and the obvious way was eventually, of course, the tail.
Toph too picked up the corpse the tail and dangled it into a plastic bag. . His new black i-pod Nano (Sasha’s perfect first important gift) weighed approximately the same as the lifeless critter he’d lifted. Sasha, meanwhile grabbed kitchen towels and bleach and removed swiftly all traces of the tragic event occurred the morning after Toph’s birthday The blood struck Sasha as being a much brighter hue than the Nero D’Avola wine imbibed at Cecconi’s and of a similar fluidity to her own. The expensive chopping board only had blood traces on the ‘weapon of mouse destruction’ side and she deemed it a keeper after a good scrub with bleach. ‘When’s the last time you’ve been tenderising meat on this?’ she said, reading Toph’s mind about the hygienic implications, ‘It’ll be alright’.

As Toph went to put the bag/coffin in the bin, Sasha said ‘Darling I absolutely have to go! Drive safely up to Manchester, it’s going to be very wet on the roads today’.
She had to rush to work, having already used imaginative excuse for her lateness on the previous two days and anxious not to establish a negative pattern in the eyes of deskbound colleagues who turned up routinely (in her opinion) too early. Such was the hurry that, quite unlike her, she summarily kissed Toph goodbye and was out of the door in a flash. That was a shame as she would now not feel the warmth of his body spooning hers and the depth of his kissing for three long consecutive nights.

Half an hour later, showered and dressed, Toph was in his car listening to his friend Marie’s compilation CD (another thoughtful birthday present), driving at his usual 90mph and weaving in and out of lanes. He was going to the hospital in Salford, to visit his dying grandfather, a man who had fought in the war and most likely had felt the weight of dead comrades on him. That must have been much harder than killing a mouse, thought Toph. But his granddad never talked about the war and never seemed bitter. Yet, he’d lost his hearing by being a gunner, but that may be not as bad as losing your life and his granddad was thankful for that. Or maybe the shock of what he’d seen had never diminished and talking would have just re-opened the floodgates of his pain and horror.

A similar thirty minutes later Sasha was taking part in a training session at her firm about responding to crisis and tragic events (ok no one wanted to mention bombs and fires and terrorist threats by their names). The course leader mentioned mutilated bodies within the first fifteen minutes – she had trained as a nurse in Northern Ireland and hopefully ‘Everyone had heard of that?’ despite the average twenty something age of most participants. Thankfully no pictures were shown and she explained how these days psychological support was deemed essential and was on offer. But were there any help-lines for guilt associated with killing small rodents? I bet there weren’t, thought Sasha. But it wasn’t guilt she felt, more likely the mouse drama would turn out to be a small bonding experience, like when Toph comforted her after her bag was snatched from a restaurant or when they endured ten consecutive days of rain and five concurrent days of sickness on their first holiday abroad.

For the time being, all thoughts of mouse number two were forgotten, but they hoped they’d never have to kill again.

23 October - Blogstars

Great, this blog is once again featured in the Standard Lite magazine. Just as well I never copied into it that entry I had drafted about the freebie newspapers wars and how it was getting stressful trying to read the freebie in the morning, the regular paper/s and the freebies at night. Information overload or information duplication. I clearly have no more time to read books and was tempted to just go on random tube journeys just to read all of this stuff. But thank you Standard Lite for choosing me for the third time. I got to think I'm the only one receiving this accolade perhaps? I was wondering if anyone wants to suggest subjects for me to write on and about and I'll see what it's like to be a Sunday Times columnist for example. That Ariel Levy... I could 'do' her stuff easily I think.

And here's my latest project if anyone wants to help.

It's called Blogstars © and though am clearly not followed by thousands of readers, I trust that they read other blogs besides mine. So please let me know of any you like - apparently there are 55 millions out there so this could take some time - and I'll endeavour to feature some of their entries here when I'm too bored to come up with mine (I will not pass them off as mine clearly).

Once I'll have collected a few interesting ones, I'll produce a proper book in the shape of paper and cardboard and pages and voila' that's a top seller next Christmas. You read it here first and it's my copyright so don't go punting this idea to a publisher. Let's just say I've already written the synopsis and I have an agent. So there.

22 October - 100 Lessons You Really Should Have Learnt by Now

Still a slow week, so apart from asking for A&R advice (do I need to explain what that is? Pretend you're judges on the X Factor or something), here's another project you could help a friend with. Am going to enjoy just bringing things to the attention of whoever the readers of this blog are.

Pls go take a look at www.100lessons.blogspot.com

and really have a good think. Always good to reflect I think.

20 October - Myspace & Projects

Ok, a slow week and have decided to ask for advice. A friend would like me to help work on the launch of this band. Don't ask. Am not in that business any longer but clearly a quick raid of the memory files and download onto a spreadsheet of said names popping up, has revealed that I still know some movers and shakers and I could approach them and get them to listen. But being that this is the internet and it gets used to raise cash by selling a line in a song lyric, why not ask you whether you like what you hear and more to the point, whether I should invest any time and potentially burn a contact by lobbying for an A&R listen. So you can play A&R, have a look, take a listen. Astonishingly, some of the band are good looking boys so why the use of silhouettes on the artwork... I can't explain. And why no picture of new guitarist who is the better looking of the lot? You can see I could get involved if I ... wanted.

www.myspace.com/aftersomewords
feel free to let me know.

18 October - Parties & Party Invites

tbc

16 October - Old punks & Strummer

I don't read biographies, have hardly got time for fiction but... this is a good one or so the critics say and so it's proved by opening chapter I read and the fact that Chris Salewicz wrote it. Top guy, my fave snappy dresser above 50. And coiner of one of my now oft used phrases about modern life 'It's absurd!' Yes it is, almost everything. Anyway off to a not so grand venue but a very good choice as it's in Joe's ole neighbourhood in Ladbroke Grove. Pretty soon the place is throbbing with 'old' faces from the days I would have made it to the front of a gig. I have a vivid memory of the Clash at The Music Machine in Camden and my dark pink velveteen dress coming off my head and being squeezed of abundant sweat, mine and my fellow pogoers, before being put back on for the freezing bus ride home. Anyway, I keep saying hello to various people, I guess some are instant face fits, Don, Mark Ellen, some ex Sex Pistols, - tragic black hole there, which one? the old bass player before Sid... - and suddenly in amongs the old crowd I see three young boys, one of which is obviously miles more charismatic that the others. Turns out it's Salewicz and Esterson's son Cole with members of his band. Just passed GCSC's and on the way to... rock stardom. Haven't heard the band but the face fits. I can tell.
Later on....

tbc

13 October - Handbag Envy

Handbag envy. Am zipping up my boots sat on the sofa after my bootcamp pilates class and my eye falls on the acqua blue leather bag next to me. It’s a jimmy choo. How lovely. I nearly reach to touch the leather but resist. Then my eye falls to a handbag directly opposite my feet on the floor. This is a black capacious leather Fendi. This is too much, this is not fair. Only 6 spaces in the class, one is a bloke, one is not taken so two top bags out of four potential ones. One woman has arrived in rambler sort of clothes so she would never have a proper handbag. I look up but all I can see is good looking young girls so clearly they have not worked to earn these bags! I can’t resist sneaking a look at the sheet with all our names for today’s classes and there they are: one Russian surname and one Arab surname. I knew it. They have not earnt those bags! They must be gifts. Or they could have earned them but am not going to go as far as calling every good looking foreign woman a prozzie - though last week a friend was having a drink with another friend’s lawyer and this one was joined by one of his Russian male client with a Swedish girlfriend in tow and a Russian female friend with impeccable English who claimed to have just arrived in London and was very vague as to what she was doing here. On pushing her, she admitted her English was due to consorting with American businessmen in Moscow. I doubt they were discussing her ‘studies’ for too long.

Later am at the supermarket near the Ladbroke Grove. It’s a cheap one, but stone me am queueing behind an 5’11 skinny girl (skinny jeans and Vans, so not a good look but if latest magainzes say so....) and she’s got a Marc Jacobs slung under her shoulder. This is too much of an affront. I can’t bear it. I wait till she pays and turns and see she’s not young, well, over 25 and wearing spectacles. She cannot be a model. Maybe she’s a designer? Maybe this one worked for her bag. I forgive her.

12 October - Luck & Authors

It's all gone mad for .... tbc

10 October - First mention of Xmas

A colleague sends me a menu to make some choices from a restaurant she’s booked for Christmas lunch. On 15 December. A little later I get another ping and confirmation that the date for the firm’s Xmas do is 8 December. The whole process started a couple or so weeks ago when we were told to hold various dates.
You know you work in an office in Europe when all this starts It’s all essentially stultifyingly boring but if you skip one or two of these events you get a reputation as a snob, so you make yourself go. I can't remembert how many lunches or work parties I've been too over the years and I have no memories of any and that's nothing to do with champagne consumption. I blame one of these events last year for turning me to a life of gambling. Well, sort of. After hating Las Vegas last Sept, which is now re-instated as a top few days out destination and hometown of the Killes, I spent over 2 hours gambling with paper money at a Xmas party's Blackjack table in order to drag it to midnight ie. a respectable time to leave. Which was about the time people were really beginning to dance like idiots but before you had to queue for cabs. I don't want to go, I don't want to go, I don't want to go.....

8 October - Rain & Stockings

Weird day re-adjusting to walking in shoes whilst wearing tights. Don’t laugh. The shoes with no straps, you know, mule style, that I’ve favoured this Summer, are a total loss. I keep bunching my toes to get some grip on the shoe before it flies off my feet. As am resourceful and keep at least a 25th of my wardrobe at work, I try others that inhabit cabinets and under desk space. Some other sandals are equally slipping and sliding around my feet. What a weird sensation after months of bare legs and feet. I similarly feel constricted around the crotch. Ok there are stay ups but didn’t reach for those this morning and it's far too early for stockings and related suspenders. This switch has to be gradual. A good root in the stockings box however, revealed I have some leggings-style tights that were obviously bought first time round. Just interested in finding out if anyone else out there has kept hosiery dating back to 1984 or if I’m unique..

6 October - Trains & Wars

This morning there was a woman applying make up on train - yes now you know my secret, I go to work somewhere and am not ferried by a chauffeur. Anyway, said woman spilled some liquid foundation which went flying and mostly on the skirt of the woman sat opposite her. The apology was scant 'Oh, it will come off' said the culprit. The other one got a tissue and starting cleaning but w/o looking at the culprit int he face. She just gave her the silent treatment. Such restraint. Do people really think that works in making anyone feel guilty? And would we not say something to a man shaving with electric razor on a train or let him do it in the first place? So why let women do all that: brushing hair, putting mascara on, the works. It’s appalling. How amazing that in my nice democratic world I can be horrified by this woman. I used the verb appalled! But I should be appalled about other stuff. Like wars for example. The other day I was meeting a friend outside SOAS and as had time, I picked up from the students bar a magazine from one fo their societies. It was clearly written by young people still working out why Jews and Palestinians can't live in harmony etc etc. It did not however mention the recent conflict in Lebanon (was about to say Israeli attacks and that would have given my bias I guess), so I looked at the date on the cover and it said 'Februray 2005'. No change there then. Guess if I picked up an issue from July 2002 it would have read current as .. no change there then. Which reminds me of how annoyed I get when I pick up out of date flyers, brochures etc. I simply don't understand why whoever works in a bar, reception of something and so on, doesn't chuck out last months' outdated waste of paper? Clearly the latter part of my (still) 42nd year is pointing in the direction of middle age, given that I keep getting annoyed about trivial stuff and I haven't even told you about the trustafarians party loving new young neighbours who plague my sleep. Most strange as am getting sex plenty times a weeks so I cannot be cranky because of any lack of....

4 October - Wills & Cash

A happy shopping event at Libertys. One of those where on the thin premise of offering you a couple of glasses of wine and a 10% discount (which you then discover did not apply to the make up section where you purchased some items you’d been delaying buying in order to get the discount as you were being thrifty). I’m reasonably restrained though really the 10% would come in handy in the real jewellery section or the rugs I love and have proxy shopping joy when girlfriend drops 500 on some Miu Miu boots. Divine but not my style so don’t even have to be jealous. A few Marc Jacobs do leave me panting but, alas, they stay on the shelves. In between catching up we turn to boring matters. If you have older parents and let’s face it, if you’re in my age group you have, pay close attention to their affairs, especially if their health is declining rapidly and especially mental faculties are becoming a loose bundle of thoughts not rooted in reality. Remember especially that your mother, unless she used to run Goldman Sachs or one of its division, is of a generation where she left all that manly business to him: like monitoring bank account, moving stocks and shares, try to avoid paying the taxman and so on.
So start planning and never mind they (parents) will accuse you of burying them before they’re dead, but you could be finding that the next six months to a year after their (or more particularly father’s demise) will be taken up with unravelling a big mess, even if there were financial advisors and other types of accountants in place. It will be a mess for you to untangle, complete with finding cheques for £5k in shares dividends that were not cashed in 2003 and are now invalid. Only talking about people who have assets of some kind of course, and not necessarily referring to myself. My lot are alive and reasonably healthy but any mention of final plans for the last… 20 years of their lives at a push is met with ‘eugh… bad luck to talk about this now’. I really don’t see what the problem is choosing a coffin in advance for example? That would give me the option of pointing them in the direction of eco friendly cardboard boxes and the savings could be donated to the living. Some living, not myself. I have enough. Am I such a bad daughter?

3 October - Too Many Words

Sent an email to a friend the other day about my w/end, covering the short period of Fri to Sun. Yes, some of it ends up on the blog but not all of course and because there were things I wanted to cut and paste in the blog, I cut and pasted first into a word doc, as you do, to weed out obvious grammar blunders. Even I noticed that this time I had written a lot. Granted, 48 hours in my life can often be crammed with stuff, but I'm hardly the secretary for defence on a whirlwind trip to Afghanistan. This friend and I are notorious for surpassing each other in length of missives and god help you if you get caught in the crossfire of our rat ta tat conversations when we meet. And of course we test each other as in ‘As she read it all? Was she paying attention?’ And so in our replies we make references to what the other said and sometimes almost run down what's mentioned point by point as if replying to a legal document. Women, such capacity for holding lots of information! Something this time made me use word count and my email conatined a staggering 2,700 words. In some quarters that passes for a short story to read on Radio 4, or a short story period, or a chapter of a novel. I hung my head in shame at the worthlessness of those words and my ability to actually write that much in one go. To compound the feeling I’m wasting valuable words, I realised that wasn’t even the only email I sent to a friend that day. Merely one of several.