13 April - What use are we?

As often on a Sunday afternoon I get that horrible feeling of ‘What have I done today/this weekend apart from gaily entertaining myself and maybe some friends. My main thing Sat. night was to hook up J with some new possible girlfriend to get him away from his unfulfilled and misplaced passion for the lawyer girl who’s never going to leave her boyfriend of 15 years for him. Then earlier on Sunday we wandered about doing zilch in various coffee places and then we got a parking fine (the swine) for leaving the car in a street in Kentish town that has no reason to be restricted on a Sunday and if you think that that cost £60 and we were going to see an exhibition that turned out to be such a massive cliché’ (Living London by Gerry Fox – ends next weekend. Just don’t go. If to illustrate London’s diversity of cultures you use footage of the Notting Hill Carnival, you’re not allowed to call yourself an artist and I don’t care if Will Self did your intro to the catalogue). Then J. finally hooked up with the lovely J. who made me feel bad as she is 35 and has convertible sports car and jets off to NYC for work and basically reminded me of what life was ten years ago (minus the sports car with personal numberplate, the little minx).

And I get down about my lack of contribution to making life a bit better for anyone else other than immediate folks (and vice-versa). I never seem to be able to involve anyone else in any voluntary work/enterprise and in order to go do it myself I have to go it alone and so I sort of baulk at the fact that I’d be giving my time to some deserving cause but miss my downtime with the friends/family. But surely the whole point of deserving work is that it costs you some effort and sacrifice so what am I waiting for? Did some in the past and of course it’s more rewarding than shipping one’s body from Kitchen and Pantry to the Electric to the Coffee Plant opposite, to up the road to Golborne Rd for another coffee – Portuguese this time, and back home to sit on the floor and read some more.

For example I dream of watching Dvds, (it would seem more productive than just wandering about and reading sunday papers), entire series like some of my friends do and be up to date on some but I sit and read whilst I watch the pile on the floor that I’ve borrowed/bought. I sort of secretly think that another USA series however well criticised it may be, is not going to teach me anything about life, not even a little. Maybe I’m arrogant but the storylines are preposterous and whilst at 30 you can give Ally McBeal the benefit of suspending your common sense and think the plots are sort of ‘real’, at 40 plus you find Dirty Sexy Money just… not relevant, not aspiring, not inspiring, not even annoying. Overacting and all is just not going to make me want to find out what happens next. Yes Donald Sutherland is great and ohmgod whatever happened to billy baldwin he's now a worse pig than his brother and that other bloke from Six Feet Under is also no longer very attractive. I don’t care for the D. Housewives, for Weeds, for CSI’s and all that. I just can’t watch them. Half an hour of Pushing Daisies and I realised I’d fallen for the hype. It may be refreshing but it’s not really nourishing. I’ll get off this line of thinking in a second.

And then I get tearful about not doing anything for this crushingly awful world outside of central London that holds so many people who have a totally shit time in it, but I’d be reluctant to go do anything in Darfur if my life is at risk (5 aid people killed recently so, it’s for real). Ok, this will pass and I’ll go pack to planning what to wear for movies at Buck Palace next week…