30 June - Weddings & Chianti

tbc

29 June - Florence & Friars

tbc

28 June - 50 is the new 40

And that's official. We go along to a super 50th b'day celebration in Holland Park. We love it. The birthday girl looks amazing, all new shorn blonde hair and up to the minute dress and shoes. Her husband is true to his style too and sports surfer togs and the t-shirt we all want (slogan: We prey for money'.

tbc

27 June - tbc

tbc

25 June - Heat & Dust

It's hot and strangely slowed down time. No wonder industry and activity are hard to conjure when the temperature goes above your normal comfort zone. tbc tbc

23 June - Hospitals & Food

These few June entries are sketchy just to act as bookmarks, as am shooting off on holiday and won't have much access to the web. Or rather, am sure I could write but as will not be on my lonesome there will be no need to spend the evening hours in an internet cafe' (a favourite how to kill time expedient of travellers the world over - plus am only going down the road to Europe so don't expect any major adventures...

21 June - 27 vs 37

Hurrah! Call the fitness regime off! Jessica Rabbit may not be coming on holiday with us after all. She's been offered event/PA role for the Rolling Stones gigs in Rome for which she would earn €3000 in 4 days. Not bad and that's before any thank you banknotes, and worth postponing her holidays for. But her b/f’s b’day falls within our original holiday time so what to do? I suggest she takes the gig and sticks it in her CV of budding media lawyer with extra curricular skills. After all he’s always complaining she earns no money to put towards the refined dinners he takes her to (he has very expensive taste) and as he never manifests any signs of jealousy despite the fact she’s a head turner and receives plenty of offers, then he won’t worry if old Mick may take a shine to her.

This way there won’t be any holiday arguments about him sat reading Proust for hours under the umbrella and wearing a shirt (delicate northern skin) and she wanting to go and 'Have A BIT of life for god's sakes’ as she says in her best ‘I need passion and excitement’ Sicilian tone.
I could write further about the perils of going out with a ‘I need to see the world and get dirty ’ 27 year old when you’re an urbane and erudite 37 year old who appreciate fine wines and food before anything else … but I won’t. Some of it surely is self explanatory.

20 June - West End Whingers

Thank you P. for an excellent 50th birthday party full of vibrant and attractive people just there to remind me that it won’t be so bad after all when I get to – gasp – mine. However, gay men do hang on to their looks with much more ‘my life depends on this’ commitment than straights, and their female friends bar the usual totally fat and ugly fag hag, are also the ones that were gorgeous when they first met clubbing in London in their 20’s. So, really, too pleasant a backdrop by half.

We ate great salmon and cheese, drank a truly tasty red wine (I don’t touch the white much) and we chatted to various old friends of Toph’s from his days as a cherished roommate to the gays. The longest conversation was about the state of the Arts Council which seems to be headed by an old acquaintance of his. M. our friend in the know had not a good word to say about its relevance today and much time was spent bemoaning how Ken’s beloved ethnic minorities hijack it and its funds. It’s unbelievable to me that in such areas they still go on and on about issues of gender and the like. It feels it’s for people who never want to let go of writing their PHd’s basically and view everything from the Marxist or the feminist or the ethnic perspective. Ok I don’t know that much, but I think I’d die in that environment, I’d spend my days rolling my eyes and being offended by words such as ‘strategy’, long skirts and ethnic jewellery and superfunky spectacle frames. Yes, I am small minded when it comes to how the arts are run.

After the interlude, and before they closed the party at a respectable midnight hour, we got to dance like old spastics to Kylie, Madonna, Sylvester, the Weather girls, Abba and the small Parthenon that constitutes gay anthems. Such abandon! Such good shirts! The following day news reached us that we got good post party reports - I was an admired novelty and they still think Toph has held on to his looks, no higher accolade can be bestowed. And P. and his friend write this great blog about their outings to the theatre. The westendwhingers. Find it if you like and enjoy.

19 June - Diamonds & Pain

A recent route to an exercise class takes me up and down Hatton Gardens. Twice a week on average and I can never resist looking into the diamond dealers shops. Even if am restrained, a few windows simply demand that I stop and look and I’m still confused by the abundance of diamonds on offer. Are they all real? Are they supposed to be this plentiful? If so, shouldn’t they be cheaper? Shouldn’t there be a sale? I keep looking and looking and try to work out which ones I prefer within my already set parameters. Today Maurice – young, Jewish, green eyes and glasses, should fix teeth, pops out of his shop and joins me in the rapture. Mine towards his window, his towards me. He’s flirting, but then I guess he’s been doing so for years.

I tell him what madam would like 1.25 minimum, but veering towards a 1.50 carat. I truly like the 2.0 ones as well, but am not a WAG so they will have to be avoided. No funny shapescuts, no squares, just the traditional round for me, set high on its cradle and no paves and no other bits on the band. Am just not sure I want white gold because I also like yellow gold for contrast. That would be the chief choice stumbling block. I ask him to help me chose between two I like. He goes for the smallest of the two because he says its clarity is better. What do I know? The other one seemed more twinkly to me. Ok I say, how much? £8k he answers.

See, here’s where it all goes funny because I find nothing wrong with that, and yet I’d never spend that on a car, or think of shaving a year off my mortgage payments or taking the parents on the QE2 or simply taking off for 6 months… No, £8 seems reasonable though I don’t tell Maurice that I have no objection to wearing second hand diamonds and would hope to find a cheaper deal that way for same size and clarity rock.

It further goes funny because I really don’t understand why they have to be called engagement rings and only purchased when there’s a proposal. I like the shape, I like the rock, I want one and have given up waiting for some man to proffer one, I want to buy one myself but worry it may bring bad luck and about the many times I’ll have to explain that ‘No, there’s no proposal, I just liked this ring and wanted to wear it’.

As for the man in my life… he should know the above and that I don’t require the wedding at all, save that cash, just the ring. But most men I know personally, as opposed to the ones I know of, will never spend 8k. They would find the sum ludicrous and think of many justifications to avoid such a purchase. I know I’ve covered this subject before on this blog and I haven’t changed my opinion. The amount of times I see on the hands of women I come into contact with, so called engagement rings that simply are symbolic and don’t take pride in a decent size rock, upsets me. I’d die if I was given one I don’t like. It would have such a negative effect, if every time I looked at it all I could think was of the £8k one I must must have some day soon. Here’s a thing… by my next b’day I shall have one. I think I’ll visit Maurice once a month just to check on him and by the time am ready, trust me to get him to knock off a grand minimum. Tsk! He just added that up just to test me for sure.

18 June - Muse vs Disney

Mmh, I had a choice to make but am not sure I chose wisely. So I didn’t get to meet Muse or the sexiest man ever ie the singer with support band Biffy Clyro when I went to Wembley to see the first real gig at the new stadium (George Michael doesn’t count). We also left too early in the set (Sunday, you know, been there, done that) to see the acrobats, the fireworks, the light fantastic show), whilst Toph returned with tales of Grace Jones holding his hand as she spoke to him at the Meltdown after-show, Nick Cave telling him his suit cost £800 and where he gets them from and that he’s reading our friend M.’s soon to be massive novel, of a 83 year old ex Sun Ra player who was off on a flight to Philly the following day, of Jude Law being accompanied by ‘a really ugly girl!’ shock horror, but nothing new, think of the nanny, of the Icelanders being super happy to talk to Shane McGowan, of the paparazzi photographing Kate being escorted out by Mick Jones’ wife and so on. Well, I like ‘Knights of Cydonia’ and I never saw the Jungle Book, what else can I tell you?

if ever I doubted the press you only need to know that there were dozens of interesting people on stage at Meltdown and all you got the following day is pics of Kate watching Pete on stage. Why? What’s the obsession with this girl?

I can also warn you about the thieving and disorganised Wembley. The staff, yeah, great uniforms, shame about the lack of knowledge about where door 251 was – you know – go that way, you get there and it’s no go back the way you came and so on. There are no golf carts and if you’re not good on your feet don’t bother. And where’s the toilet in the hospitality area? You have to go back out says the helpful uniformed girl and on the way out oh look what’s this signposted door 2 ft away from uniformed girl, the loo of course. These people would probably hamper you in an emergency, evacuation and the like.
I better also tell you that a fish & chips was £7, a bottle of beer £4 and my posh crab thingy was a whopping £15, no salad or other vegetables with it and the few prawns were the same price. But the oysters would have been a good deal at £9 for half a dozen. And no wine served by the glass, you had to buy a bottle. Wembley… the final. You won’t see me there again.

15 June - Iceland & India

S., our favourite Icelander (after lady ms B) is in town and this time he’s brought his beautiful wife and another couple who tower over all of us at 6’4” each and another friend who doesn’t understand our sense of humour and takes everything said very seriously. We go for a drink, then for dinner (where we’re joined by soon to be ubiquitous new writing sensation M. And later by P. who’s organising Jarvis’ night at Meltdown and to prove her credentials to a doubting Icelander, shows him the Bono and Bob Geldof’s numbers programmed into her phone. Ah, but do you have Bowie I ask. She’s not in the mood for pleasantries as the line up is stressing her (no Annie L, no Bryan Ferry but Pete Docherty will be there and … others. Then we go for a drink. The evening reveals that Toph wants to buy an island off the coast of Iceland – though he doesn’t want to be there in winter - and I shoot back that I want to go live in India. Mmhh how are we going to reconcile these opposite worlds? For the moment we can avoid discussing as frankly it’s pie in the sky. With the diners at large we alight on the topic of toe sucking and who’s pro and against. The boy and I are in support, the others are not pronouncing their preferenes so clearly. There seems to be some doubt as to the function of toe sucking. But I won’t have anyone dismiss it if they haven’t tried it and not just the once. And yes, it goes without saying that clean feet are essential. Shame we all left at 1am when kicked out of a bar (I do rue my decision not to have any private club memberships) because another hour or two of drinking could have revealed all manners of other useful info. Who knows, if we end up in Iceland where everyone knows everyone and they have to rotate partners when they split up and stay friends with the ones they supersede, it would be good to know if they do something we don’t and vice versa.

14 June - Nabucco & Smoke

I'll tell you later... tbc

12 June - Bush & Bikinis

Am soon going on holiday again, this time to the seaside in the chic Amalfi coast. I’ll be always closely accompanied by the 27 year old g/friend of friend in whose apartment we’re staying. The girl is statuesque, well boobs endowed, has fantastic shiny black hair and though she’s not quite a Monica Bellucci, she’s top totty. Men turn and stare when she’s fully clothed so I can only imagine blokes tripping over their ice-creams on the beach. So you can see my predicament. So, much against my usual behaviour, I’ve decided to go hell for leather in reducing the gap between the dark Jessica Rabbit and me. And don't you mention age and firmness to me.

So it’s the linseed and the vinegar in warm water (colon cleansing), the pink grapefruit before a meal and the dandelion tea afterwards as it's meant to pack a punch in speeding up the metabolism, plus the use of top Italian anti cellulite cream, the two sessions of Powerplate per week, plus one of Bootcamp pilates, plus ad hoc a step class, a spin class and a jog and rowing session and the usual sex and watching what I eat in general – there is no la bouffee’ de croissants chez Lisa and the alcohol intake is not much.

Ok this hardcore regime has not been going for very long but still I see no visible improvement. What is this imperviousness to my efforts? What is wrong with my metabolism? Then again look at Madonna, it takes 4 hours a day everyday to look like her (actually I wouldn’t want her face too much, but the bod is ok, though a bit too pale) and look at me... It’s not that much different. Ok, uh, not if you consider her 28 hours a week (and a slice of toast and jam once a year when she's feeling naughty) and my 5 hours a week (yes I take some days off). So really, I’m just going to have to never walk side by side with JR, and wear vertiginous heels on the beach (if JLo can do it, so can I) and make good use of the cute, short sarongs. After all, you’re only old once. And my stomach is flatter than hers, it's just the legs, the horror, the legs.

The sarong may be extra useful also because the B/F appreciate the bush which am growing just for him. It’s a relief to save the £45 regular waxing budget but I don’t much like the brillo pad appearance. Yes I do know about using conditioner, same as you do for your hair but…it’s not working that well, nor is the oil. Ageing bush hair not being the same as young silky bush hair, am now opening the forum to readers’ suggestions as to what product to use or alternatively, confirmation that blokes don’t notice. It’s not like Toph said anything regarding softness. Yet he’s not adverse to a bit of preening himself if forced. He lets me cut short is underarm hair, as boys get older too and sprout more hair. Whilst I was at it I also shaved off stray ones from his back and sorted out the chest area too. Whilst kissing him of course, an’t keep away from him. He also abhors nose hair (we always wonder when we see blokes who have mothers or girlfriends, why said females are not bothered by this) and though he stops me at the cojones, I usually manage to sort that area out as well. We’re happy monkeys!

But it’s all very well at home, but what will happen when am in bikinis? Will someone else see it and think ‘gross?’ I remember nearly throwing up once sat downhill at a picnic in Primrose Hill from the g/friend of a then famous director. His movie perhaps had not come out quite yet, but the g/friend definitely had the Full Monty that Summer. There was so much dark hair sprouting around her knickers and well, I’d never seen anything like it outside of Spanish porn films. Now that I think about it Brazilians and the like were yet all the rage that year, but surely myself and my girlfriends were a bit more trimmed?

11 June - Cancer & Lines

Darn, it’s started. A close relative is having surgery soon to find out if there’s cancer cells lurking in his prostate.
Ok it’s my father and this is a return to a problem we thought had been vanquished so it’s not that hopeful that he should be summoned to surgery. Still we hope. And I won’t go into it too much, as this blog doesn’t refer often to relatives, it’s about me aging and wondering if it will all end as per all ie in piss and tears, but yes, I must be an awful person, because the following selfish thought occurred - in case things spell his life is on a course to sure death, which it is naturally, but I’m hoping he’s around for a good ten to fifteen years longer. Anyway, that awful thought is (are you ready? I never said you had to like me) …'Hope this doesn’t add lines to my face!’ (as in, you know, pain, grief, contrition).

10 June - Jealousy & Misremembering

Not an original post, but I wrote this to a friend earlier and it's just one of those things I put here to remind myself of something or other.

Am jealous… I hear you're going to glastonbury...

darn! not been for god knows how many years.. before the big fence went up in any case. Think the last one was an awfully muddy /rainy one and that spoiled it so much that i had to take a few years off to recover and then... that was it. Bear in mind that I was sleeping in the back of an estate car within one of the VIP enclosures so i didn't have it that bad, but mud for 3 days! awful! it meant you could never sit down somewhere and rest your legs which were 4 times as tired because lifting a foot out of mud x a millino steps, becomes a superhuman effort. oh and i fell in the mud and it never dried off and I was freezing. I can honestly say I do not remember who was playing or what was the highlight. It always surprises me when people display perfect memories of what they felt on such and such a night watching such and such a band. I mean, I can do that for ten occasions at the most but my times at Glastonbury? No major music revelations. Ah I know, think Portishead were playing and we didn’t make it into their tent. Ah well.... And we missed the notorius s hit spraying incident in the dance tent by ... half an hour or so.

Having said that, the year that we arrived and plunged straight into Underworld's (or was it the Prodigy?) maddest set and I promptly lost my friend P. who had the tent and the car and never found him till the last day wandering sunburnt and in a daze after taking about 40 e's was.. just great. I had the keys to the car and I knew where the tent was, so i was fine, just kept worrying that he had no money, no toothbrush, no clean er.. clothes.I am like a jewish mother most of the time and am not jewish after all! I got to drive his BMW back as he took a lift with two mad women on acid. And still he got home safe.
He had the best time though.. ended up marrying the girl who shared the 40 e's with him. They live in a massive barn in essex and have 2 gorgeous kids. I'll never hear a bad word said about e's. Though for the longest time everytime i saw her, i wanted to ask 'how could you sleep with him, he was so filthy?' (as in unwashed). I had had a previous dalliance with him and prematurely ended it when i realised i couldn't get him to ever remove the dirt under his fingernails. You think about it girls, it's not just the cooking that gets affected, but foreplay becomes a 'get away from me' moment. And once i put all his filthy cushion covers in a bucket with bleach and he told me off! Now he has a potato field so i imagine dirty fingernails look sort of bucolic.

there you go... am going all nostalgic as i don't think i'll ever have such a great time, especially after deciding i'll never go to a festival ever again. Benicassim last year was good/bad enough and cost me about £600 all told. and what did i see? franz ferdinand? placebo? the horror! not worth it mate. but glastonbury is different...

ps. and now everyone has mobile phones and they spend all their time on it arranging rendez vous. Drives you mad. My advice is to say you have no reception and lose who you go with .. just for a day. It makes it all so much better, though of course it's not wise to lose the girlfriend! or maybe you should?

8 June - I love Sophie

Calle.... This is from a review of her work displayed in the French pavillion at the Biennale. And this is why I wish I was an artist, because I could make 'this' out of something as routine as... a 'happened to everybody at least once' type of experience. But am not... I also like her because of so many of her other previous projects. Go find her.

...Sophie Calle scared me in a different way. Ditched by email, Calle presented the letter from her erstwhile lover to over 100 women, who pored over it, analysed and deconstructed it, lampooned and otherwise went through the text phrase by phrase, word by word. I feel a bit sorry for the guy, who, Calle told me, has now heard quite how public she has made the letter. Unless, that is, she was lying. You never know with Calle quite where truth begins and ends. Calle asked psychoanalysts, sex therapists, crossword compilers, private detectives, professors, clowns, actors and singers to give the poor jerk's words a thorough going over, and, has filled the French Pavilion with hours of film, texts and other responses to the offending missive.
The letter is danced in Bombay by a woman wearing anklets, and by a ballerina in a lighthouse. Comedians and clowns have a go at it. Miranda Richardson reads it, then tears it up. A chanteuse sings it, and so does Laurie Anderson. Onions are peeled and tears flow. Thank God the poor sap didn't dump Calle by text message. The artist also advertised for a curator, and the artist Daniel Buren applied for the job. Calle acknowledges that her talents lie in producing the material for her work, and that she needed someone like Buren to install and orchestrate it. I could have stayed for hours....

7 June - TV stuff

Toph was out w. S. recently returned from Cannes where he was trying to fund an interesting film cum musical about Condoleeza Rice. Yes, sounds far fetched but these days anything is a worthy subject. Tell you more about it some other time. Shame am not meeting him, as he’s written a spirited defence of trash TV (which he has provided a few times as a director) in the Observer and I disagree with him and we could have wasted a good hour or two arguing. Having said that I don’t watch it so don’t really know what I’m talking about. It’s bad enough that as usual even w/o watching BBrother, one soaks up totally useless information about it… like one of the contestants was born in prison to a prostitute mother who then died (not sure if in prison or not). I think that’s exactly what researchers look out for, any sign of traumas that will lead to a degree of mental imbalance and hey, you’re in. Short of actually trawling psychiatric wards for people who are alredy certified deranged and possibly didn’t accrue more than a 25% of total vocabulary available to a native of this country.

But back to S. Before Xmas, I had gone to a screening in a disused church in Brompton of two films, one by him and one by his sister Nike. V different styles, different subjects. His was 12 mini films abut Madonna, but never actually featuring her or her songs as they couldn’t be cleared, and to be shown late at night on some cable channel. I thought he’d done lots and lots of work for no profit margin and it was all very inventive: plasticine figures, look-alikes, cartoons, transvestites the lot. Shame that despite the subject’s fame, it would never get many viewers. Nike’s film by contrast was about a forest protection project in Tanzania and clearly not so frothy and very earnest. I thought ‘How nice to be in this family spawning two, if not that talented, at least trying hard individual and I won’t go into what mum and dad do/did for a living, but it must feel a bit like this to be the Goldsmiths or the Birleys (I read my ES magazine).

I’m easily pleased, so I found no fault in either program. But the two more TV savvy male companions I was with had more critical comments, no doubt coloured by the fact that S. is very handsome to his coterie of female admirers and never has any trouble whatsoever pulling and that uh ho, would make you jealous. What was drolest for me was that a friend/guest at the screening does work for Nike sportswear in marketing. How refreshing that her attitude was a bit like mine ie. that it’s all a bit self involved working in such an environment, she said and there are lots of older people who use language that’s down with the kids and so on, thus making them instantly ridiculous. She didn’t wear the gear head to toe, but I told her that as far as branding goes they do a good job. I for one, still covet one of those fluorescent tight yellow Nike Night run tops. I was away, otherwise would have taken part in the race. As for the North Vs South Nike run, I was too late in trying to get a space. I only did a 10k of theirs once and that was brilliant. I remember the two guys at the finish line talking into tape recorders and recording what brand of shoes everyone was wearing. Just in case I was in any doubt as to why Nike sponsor the event: it’s all about gathering data. Am now not sure where exactly I was going with this train of thought …. Except that S. is now off to his house in Havana, as you do, and I wish I could just go along.

6 June - Cranes & Ridges

On some days I am a boy. How do I know? Because going to work this morning I saw the most enormous crane I’ve ever seen. Roads were blocked and it’s arm was lifting what looked like an entire train wagon but in fact was an air-conditioning unit (I asked) being paced on top of a 30 storey building. It was fascinating and I walked under its path… nobody stopped me because they were all looking up too. I was then trying to calculate how much such an operation cost and clearly I have no idea and I also wanted to know what it feels like to operate the crane and if it’s all down to one person/man, but it made a change from thinking about bikinis to buy before my next holiday. The other day instead I picked up and was reading the Robert Dyas mini catalogue from cover to cover. I(it’s one of those shops that sells mothballs, kettles, household repairing stuff). I don’t have a garden but am fascinated by the objects one uses to tend to it … and the furniture, this is all sort of cheap but still, I’d like a gazebo. Very much. So there you go, secateurs and other workbench style objects. Something must be wrong or I must be more bored than I’ve ever been.

Oh, I’ve just taken a look at my freshly painted toenails and there ‘ridges’ on them, clearly visible under nail varnish. Ahi ahi lo siento, me duele. Damn, am a girl again as this is going to plague my thoughts for a while, ugly toenails, ugly feet, why me? Is it really true that beautiful ballerinas have ugly feet given all the punishing they give them? But I look after mine! ‘s not fair.

4 June - Some I forgot

So, last week I also went to see Pelleas Et Melisande at ROH. I was bored that day so went wearing a dark and curly wig. Turns out next day that a work colleague was also at the performance (we do sound so old going on about opera whilst getting a coffee) and sat in a box directly opposite our el cheapo standing tickets but good enough to catch every baton nuance of Mr Rattle. Colleague could have seen me and that would have been funny, though not easy to explain. Maybe though she would have not recognised me at all. After all twenty or so years ago I stood in a bar watching a boyfriend trying and failing to locate me. Why the wig then? Same reason, sometimes you want red hair or platinum blonde and dress accordingly. Toph took it in good humour as had remembered to warn him and he'd met the wig once before in bed. I did learn that you should fix your wig properly or you spend all evening touching it especially if it's very long curly dark hair and so it weighs down and tries to drag back from your forehead. How do they fix Beyonce with all that shaking about she does? Maybe they're extensions and not wig? Also, if you ever need to meditate to music, getting standing tickets for a Debussy opera is good investment. It wasn't an opera to watch, though some of the music was sublime and you could not hear a pin drop, though somebody coughed and Rattle told us to try and be quiet (er). That's what you get with incredible acoustics. So yes, was really nice 3 hours of silence and the fact we were standing sort of added to the feeling spiritual and doing a sort of penance or is that penitence?

I also went past one of those shops where you exchange clothes and saw my strappy Vivienne Westwood red shoes on sale for £200! They'd given me £80 for them, which I was happy enough for as had seen them in a sale for £120 but heck, maybe they were discontinued too soon and now more collectable?
They were unwanted gift or rather wanted gift only giver had not picked the right VW...! Silly man. I had been hoping for her trademark platforms of course and these were not that obviously VW! Plus had to get them out of my sight as they were a sort of blood present by which I mean from an ex lover I had trained to give me shoes and Toph had admired them and it just didn't feel right to wear them with him. Ain't I sweet?

I also forgot to write about J's hedge fund ball which was graced by the likes of Bill Clinton and Madonna. They do know how to treat themselves in the super eraning enclaves. Madge was not preforming btw, but presumably has money hedge funded and is precious client. At said ball they had a 10k per ticket raffle auction to win a pair of 25k diamond earrings. Er…not a good return /odds but J had been told by his boss he had to cough up for a ticket. And he didn't win. He had taken as a guest a wannabe swedish girfriend in whose intimates he's yet to make himself welcome. I think he thought this would be the clincher, but if I know gold diggers who don't put out till they have a ring, I'd imagine that instead of being impressed by his gesture she probably was keeping an open list of other (even richer than J) catches present. Am I too cynical? I wish I wasn't... Must find out how he got on.

Also last week consultant extraordinaire and part time supperman Dr S sent me an email captioned 'I went shopping and bought two of these' . I opened the picture and saw a pretty stunning giant helicopter, which I know he needed for his medical business in the Bahamas. I forwarded to a friend who has other ideas about his business and implied drug running from West Indies. See, am not the only cynic in my world.

I also went to ROH (again) as love Cathy Marston's ballets…but her Echo and Narcissus did not make me cry. Something about the music. If you don’t like the music (too dissonant, very Jenufa) you end up not seeing how fluid and wonderful the movements are because they are less appealing? I know this is not the way to go about these things but it was a disappointment, though the reception was rapturous so er... maybe the moves truly were innovative.

And a friend was in town form Belgium and said 'I want to try the primark experience where is it…I have 45mins between meetings'. So I duly explained the cardinal rule to use ten mins for shopping and the rest of her widnow to pay for the items. A few hours later she texted me this: 'Just been in. Mouth fell open on seeing their ridiculous cashier system. No f@@@ing way, walked straight out. Can t do that.' Well, she's not a teenager either and has no time to waste.

And we went to Queens park on Sunday afternoon. Toph had never been there. Now that he’s considering the area as a possible place to buy in as it’s been properly gentrified to his satisfaction, it’s too late. Our friends who have bought a house by the park last year paid 900k for it so now over a million one figures and they've recently acquired Neil and Glenys Kinnock as neighbours so tough, too late. It’s Harlesden or er... the mind is in pain at the thought.

Phew. Must tell you about Lord of the Rings and the gay 4oth in Hoxton...
Later...

3 June - Travel & Perils

I have travel envy, though I can’t do anything about it right now, except suffer. Met F. ex colleague who’s raking exotic trips up and in October she’s going to Eastern Bhutan and will see the Taktsang Monastery (Tiger Nest). Which is just stunning and clinging to some rocks. Though am sure she’d be wide eyed too at what I saw in Nepal a few years ago, we’re just the same. She’d want to add Nepal and I want Buthan, Burma and Tibet. Oh and China and Mongolia and so on. The list is endless. Next year she knows she’ll return to Vietnam and will also go to Laos. I love it.. it’s those moments where one says excitedly to the other ‘And I’ll be in Hoi-an again’ and before she’s finished you scream “Hoi An!!!! I love it!!” And it’s all I love it, no I love it , no I love it, I love it more… before you start bemoaning how many more new hotels there are. F’s line ‘I am never going to go back to Angkor Wat now, too busy’. Yeah, like Med beaches or something. Anyway, I start dishing her advice on Laos.

It’s all magic in retrospect though I remember a massive downer in Laos for a few days when all was damp, my clothes never dried, the roads were a river of mud, I was not partaking in the sack-fuls of dope that most of the downmarket travellers seemed to have come there for and the Valium I took to overcome the tedium of a long bus journey backfired by not kicking in until a few hours too late (ie not on the truck) when I actually wanted to stay awake only to fall asleep at 7pm and wake up again at 3am to listen to cocks cocking or whatever they do. And you understand why the kids play with catapults so much. You wish you had one but in the dark finding the cock would not be so easy. Torture, kike having jetlag, how do people take this sleeping pill stuff, how can a universal pill work for everybody’s different body sizes and weights and rhythms?

I was bored out of my mind in Laos (which is exactly the point and a sort of achievement and reason why people go there) till I surrendered and didn’t pay attention anymore. One day I found myself as usual walking alone in undergrowth on the way to some cave which I entered again on my own followed by some local teenager and that’s when you reflect (a little too late) ‘Nobody knows I’m here, nobody will miss me for days and if he decides to rob me and rape me and kill me and hide my corpse nearby, I’ll never be found’ and uh, you sweat a lot and try to remain calm whilst you retrace your steps out of the cave and wait for a while till some other tourists appear and hope the fact there’s a woman in their group spells they are not a psychopath couple intent on also killing you.

But on that occasion I didn’t sweat as much as that time in Cambodia when I misread the distances on the city map and, incensed about the price the taxi drivers were quoting me to go to the airport in Phnom Phen, I decided to defy them and asked a local boy on a motorbike nearby to take me there for what I was prepared to pay.
And he did. Only I had thought the airport was a couple of miles away when in fact it was a couple of miles away from the edge of the map not the centre where I was, and so by mile 3 I slowly started to convince myself I was being driven elsewhere, in total darkness, to my sure death on a road that had probably seen hundreds if not thousands of deaths back in the days of the Khmer Rouge. I couldn’t sweat it as I was on a fast bike from which the prospect of throwing myself off was not appealing, partly because I thought he’d turn around and pick me up before I had time to run into the fields which I presumed he knew and I didn’t. As usual I stayed calm and within the longest agonizing minutes I started to see some lights in the distance and willed myself to believe that maybe that was the airport. And yes, it was and he dropped me off at the entrance and my friend C. turned up an hour later or so from Bangkok and her driver took us back to a posh house of diplomat friends living there and a housekeeper who washed my smalls and left them beautifully folded on the bed the next day.

On the shielded large terrace of Mr G Snr with gin and tonic in hand (has to be done) civilization prevailed, though we were but a mere few hundred yards from the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. More on that some other time. I told C. about my foolishness and she told me off most sternly and not for the first time. A couple of days later she had real reason to save my life as I stupidly took a drag of a cigarette in a dark, though not dodgy bar and was violently sick and passed out in a not very salubrious yard and surrounded by strangers who didn’t look that friendly. I was gone and had she not been there, this time I don’t know what would have happened. We correctly worked out later that my joint had heroin in it and uh ho, that’s what it does first time you take it (apparently), make you sick and throw out. So no blissfully spaced out feelings for me. Silly girl.

But of course it was all fantastic experiences I turn over and over in my mind often. These days I have a Sprite and I feel weird. Yes, once a month I feel the need for a Coke and reach for a Sprite as it seems less revoltingly full of sugar and that’s what happens. I feel weird. But there’s no sense of danger in that is there? And no nourishing memories...

2 June - Rufus & Will

I went to see Rufus Wainwright on his last night at the Old Vic.
Magic.
And then I met him at his aftershow. Well chuffed and speechless in admiration of his perfect face, my kind of face.
Then sat down next to Will Young (god knows... maybe their publicist is the same one) and so came back to reality with a bang. Overheard Will say 'The problem with my album is...' but not the rest of the conversation he was having with v. young urchin boy. Not that you'd be interested right?
Am now kicking myself for not having the presence of mind to engage Rufus in any form of conversation with moi, which would have led to exchange of emails and numbers and I'd become his most trusted confidante outisde of his precious camp world. Damn

1 June - Decline & Memory

18 months ago I had my handbag stolen and in it was an address book that crucially contained a much cherished page/s annotated with friends’ birthdays. Since then I’ve tried to remember when they are (ok, I now probably know only half or perhaps a third of the people in the list, but still) and somehow stubbornly refused to write them down again. To test my memory I guess. Some I know totally by heart without fail – a bit like some landline numbers of friends met twenty years ago still roll off the fingers - and I can place virtually all of them in the right month as have always associated them to the relevant star sign. But as for picking the right day, this is no longer possible. It goes from ‘Must remember S’s b’day next month/week’ to ‘When is S’s birthday exactly?’ and makig a vague note on diary. Not always having a mutual friend to ask for clarification or being ashamed to do so (we’re talking about people who are precious to me) and before you know it… it was two days ago or last week and you feel bad. Yes I’ve read it, memory decline. It happens. The sign of aging is possibly not so much not remembering the date but the stubborness in not now making a note, starting the list again so to speak, so as to have it for next year and instead pig headedly think 'No, I must rember, I will remember'.

And let’s not get started on the jumble of words that your brain throws up when you speak several languages and you’re searching to say ‘traffic lights’ in French and well, it’s just not there any more, but you can think it in German. Which is not what you need when you’re trying to communicate with your minicab driver for the night who is dumb and partially deaf (true story but I’ll tell it another time. I wanted to stop the car and ‘chat’ and ask him what made him pick such an incredibly unsuitable job. One that he had to perform on a Saturday night when presumably most of his fares would not be French speaking, not pissed, polite women)… er… as for getting off subject that’s not age, that’s me always.