13 March - Cyndi & Madonna

Ah, much better, a Soho late night bar. I’ve come to meet Martin, sculptor and one of the most dashingly handsome gays you’ll ever hope to squire you somewhere. He’s chatting to a friend he did a house up for. A marketing/brand revolutionary woman, that’s how she describes her job. To me it’s just a question of re-designing and re-positioning a product. No big deal or words to use but then I wouldn't be able to charge the money for it... She’s talking non stop about her first time in NY recently, for some reason she’s never been before. She’s in charge of re-branding something big, maybe an M&S beauty range or a Molton Brown one, or whatever, six figure salary she says. Don’t believe her. Not that what she’s wearing would betray it. I guess she’s deliberately anti-fashion. One of those ‘I can afford it but I chose not to’. Except that her silly old mangy fur would need Kate Moss to wear it to make it look ok. She’s more than a bit ugly, though, so I wonder how that works in the beauty industry. Some reverse kudos? I stop short of asking….Close to me in age, reddish wavy hair, sort of Irish looking.
V. kooky looks indeed, which is my old theory of the Cindy Lauper vs Madonna. Ok they both had ribbons and haberdashery galore instead of real clothes, but at some point the pretty girl can stop masquerading as a clown because she has other ways to get attention. The ugly one has to keep using the disguises. Am sure the Cindy Laupers of this world would disagree vehemently, but they know that I know and am right. She’s talking to Martin who fusses over me and tries to have a conversation alongside her monologue, so she has to break the flow. She asks ‘So who are you?’ My reply gets to be under ten words ‘Well, I’m Lisa and I’m not from London, but…’ before she just turns back to Martin with something to say and that’s it, she's off again about Soho House in NYC. She’s cut me off. Unbelievable. I guess it had to happen one day. I’m too stunned to even fight this one. I text Martin that we’ll talk some other time and move on.

10 March - Punk & Rip-offs

The Selfridges Future Punk exhibition in the Ultralounge in the basement is naff!!! And that’s official. I was in there for max 10 mins, was all it took to ‘tour’ it. And had to ring a friend to ask ‘Er… it’s full of t-shirts with skull and bones motifs, er.. that was never punk right? That was Rocker or Goth right?’. She confirms. Another girlfriend later says she was most disappointed as well. None of us went to the opening club/night but in a sense that’s better. Who wants to see fat Buzzcocks and ugly witches Slits on a stage? These people are older than me and should not be on display ranting their old hits. May as well go and see Yes or Emerson Lake and Palmer in terms of dynosaurs.
Apart from anything else, everything is ultra expensive in the Ultralounge, maybe that's why it's called that? Ultra taking the piss? It’s pretty much a joke to want to charge £40/60 for a punk t-shirt. But if you have to team it with Alessandro dell'Acqua shoes at over £250 that makes sense. To someone.
Though I guess it could be ok to make your own badge or t-shirt. Except that the only customers doing that are 12 year olds and could be making pottery or face painting and have same amount of fun. The Malcolm MacLaren line for kids is indeed brilliant but that is it. So much for the relentless promoting of the event. Am a sucker, I went along. Funnily enough the only things I purchased in Selfridges that day are some extremely good quality fake/fabric hyacinths. They’re really good. Two of us bent down to smell them they seemed so real. At a fiver a stem they’re very decadent but there you go. I cannot be a punk in 2006. I moved on, suggest this lot do the same.

5 March - Nike & Fonda

Oops done it again. Signed up for some ridiculously out of my reach course. This time for the Nike dance workouts held by none other than choreographer to the hip hop royalty, Jamie King. Must have thought I was a Sugababe that morning I clicked on the link. Oh, wait, they can’t dance. Ok, someone else then, and in any case 20 years younger than me, maybe he just does Girls Aloud? I’ll have to go to a huge dance studio behind Kings Cross. Am doubtful I’ll be wearing togs that do not consign me to the pre-history of fitness. Though, if I had some leotard circa Jane Fonda it would be great. After all Madonna is wearing some updated pneumatic version of it, but I can’t justify that amount of showing off. I can’t dance basically.
I remember the year I was in LA when the Fonda classes had just taken off with her! And I.. didn’t go…for some reason or other. Regret it now of course. How long before Flashdance was that? I don’t recall wearing legwarmers in the street but surely must have done? Was same year I was pushing my cart around the first organic supermarket I’d ever seen. It was WOW! And WOW! for an hour. I kept picking up items, even plain carrot juice in a bottle was a novelty. Folks, this is before Fresh ‘N’ Wild and Planet Organic took over even dismal neighbourhoods in London like Stoke Newington and 20 years before McDonalds run into their current financial problems as the world wakes up to health concerns (Malcolm Gladwell says Fat will be the new Race in terms of issue).
Anyway, I’m not normally a back of the class sort of person but on this occasion I better hang back. I’ll be lucky to spy anyone my age. Wonder if I’ll finally feel am too old for this? Naaah….

2 March - Paris & Threesomes

Not me. All quiet, must be my doomed time to live by proxy.
Getting g/friend’s Issy’s text at 3am regarding her spit roasting in Paris. ‘Soooooooo tired’ is all she texts next day. Well, I think, she’s not a kid and at her age, 40, it’s a considerable undertaking satisfying two guys and receiving from them. Then remember they, the men, are much older than her, so ho hum, there’s some kind of extra energy generated by the threesome and it's not just young footballers who do this.
Her first. Ahh, how sweet to pop that cherry. When I see her couple of days later, and we talk and she brings herself to describe it (a little, she's conscious I could just start shifting in my chair at the description) she just goes wide eyed and ‘Lisa it was fantastic!! I never thought…’
I’m like, er, yes, shame we have all these taboos about what we can and cannot do according to some morality thingy handed down by parents/society/church etc. How can it be possibly failing to be amazing to get fucked for so long and so comprehensively? You know all those times he’s fucked you and you think, if only he could go down on me at the same time? Or he's s failing to co-ordinate that well the cunnilingus with the stroking of the breasts, as he doesn't have long chimp arms and it's not that easy to stretch? Well helloooo? This is the only way to do it for full on, all around sensory overload. But alas, it’s bad, apparently.
Issy mentions how she’d downed two shots or three of whisky, when she was still under the impression she had only one man to deal with, and I mention how the celebrated Jack Daniels bottle (technically not a whisky, ok, I know that) is on the cover of my beloved Motley Cru biography and how given that rockers are forever doing it freestyle with a bunch of women etc, that must be their not so secret secret, the drink that loses your inhibitions and actually dislodges them. Maybe vodka doesn’t do the same?
Maybe threesomes are just like drugs, supposed to be so bad, don’t ever go there kids, because if you do... you may just never have it any other way, addiction follows until it all gets complicated by the managing of feelings of said three people, especially if the blokes are best friends or... brothers even.

27 February - Topshop & Toph

I think I better get back with Toph (he hasn't noticed much), because this downer is hard to kick. I go to buy something to cheer myself up and unfortunately choose Topshop, just you know, to have a look. And it pisses me off no end. There's stripes, the usual oh it must be spring let's do the nautical look, and plastic colourful jewellery sort of '60s style. BORING beyond belief. All made in China for a pittance and all costing well above what this stuff is worth. I imagine if I were a mother trailing behind my teenage daughter who's insisting I get her this or that because if the store is awash with it it must mean all her friends have it already and if she doesn't it's social obstracism etc. No wonder my mother was angry. I'm angry and I'm only looking.
Could be worse... at least they go up to my size 8 so technically I could buy what I want if I didn't think my Visa would cry at being abused this way. In fact most teenagers are larger and taller than me and think the shop still only goes up to a size 12 but it's really a 14 masquerading as smaller to not make them cry. Even the handbags fail to excite me. Thank god Liberty is still open. If all else fails there's the real jewellery counter there. Small but perfectly adequate.

24 February - Fashion Week & Weak Fashion

Just as well it was fashion week and Connie drags me to some fashion shows and the stands at the Nat History Museum tent-like mini conurbation. It's all very well. It's fun, but I never bought into fashion that much and I wonder why. There we were music kids naturally consorting with the St. Martin's kids who would dress the music kids etc but I never made any friends there. For some reason I viewed fashion as being less grown up than music/literature/art and therefore less worthy of spending anytime on it? Let's face it, with a few notable exceptions people who go to fashion school are people who can't read or write. Is this controversial and patronising enough for today? If dressing dolls is what you do as a kid, then dressing adults is still a kids' game? No idea why I think this. Suffice to say that a friend says 'Wow, fashion shows, aren't you lucky?' and I find myself replying a little surlyishly that it's all a whole load of inflated bollox really. You arrive, you queue for ages, you jostle to get in, you get your seat and wait and then it's all over in a flash ie. 20 mins max. Time it, how long does it take for a few outfits to be walked down a catwalk? I go for the music and the setting but even that can be disappointing as this year's tracks are used over and over again.
Ok, this is London I'm in. Am sure if I was a the Chanel show in Paris or the D&G in Milan, it may all seem a bit more interesting but yeah, not here.
Of course the ones who are having a whale of a time are the skinny 18 year olds who are in their first year at St Martin's or want to go or didn't get in and so are going to be.... a stylist! (as in, I go get stuff from the shops for you to wear, maybe I pair this off with that.. how about it? How hard can that be? doh! ). Back in the 80's days of overblown budgets for vids and photo sessions we used to pay these people £500/700 A DAY to go fetch a few glad rags to make Mica Paris look less fat or something. Then again we used to pay the make up artist actually more and some were good. There' Pat MacGrath in 8 pages of Vogue make up sublime design for whoever she works for and she was Mica's girl. That's it, stop reminiscing, a sign of lack of sex and serotoning clearly.
Ok, maybe suddenly not having a lover also means I go replenish the bitterness cart I yoke under and drag along? That must be it.
The fashion tent is moderately fun. Whenever I see the wholesale prices I think, yep, that's about right, but I wouldn't buy it when you double it or treble it. Nothing blows me away apart from an Indian designer from Bombay who has the most incredible fabrics Ashish N Soni. There you go, my tip for the top.

17 February - One plus One & Halved?

It could be that, unless you smoke dope and stretch time, everything happens so much faster? You cover all the stages of relationships at a rate of a month in a week sort of thing? Like that movie 'Me, and You and Everyone We Know' by Miranda August? so that you can arrive at splitting up a mere few weeks after you get together with someone? I'd like to perhaps go one further and split up on first date and then work it backwards? Like Francois Ozon's film '5x2' or '10x4' - I don't remember now and too lazy to go cross reference on google.
Anyway, think I have split up - interesting use of language as it's not just splitting up two people but achieving a sort of split with self and one part of you is operating fine and dandy, the other one is at home crying under the duvet? 's bad. Then again if I do the bad/sad stuff at the beginning of the year, there's a whole er, rest of the year to look forward to? Don't even think he realised it? Men can be a bit dense when you're on the end of a phone sort of close to tears and saying 'So what do we do then? You ok if we let this one go then?' Ok, I see my language wasn't very clear either. Maybe you have to draw diagrams? A stick insect version of you with an arrow walking in one direction and one of his stick insect going the opposite way?