31 August - Dinners

A good friend I never wished to offend on this blog has confessed she never reads it because she doesn't want to read about Toph who's primarily a friend of hers. I said 'Hey, don't worry, I don't write graphic stuff about me & lover boy, I try to keep it tasteful'. But she said she has a vivid imagination. That may be so, but why would imagining what I do with the boy be perturbing to a friend of his. Ok, there must be history but it's old history... Let's put it this way. I could read about P. who reads his blog (and thanks for the good conversation about our respective opinions of Hellboy!) and what he does with his girlfriend and it wouldn't trouble me. I expect he varies little from what he did with me and uhm... it was pretty good stuff so it has to be ... done! But you could argue that not many people are as open as I am about sex. I get told this often enough so I have to recognise that others have tiny layers of prudishness that I don't possess. Anyway, it was good news to know she doesn't read me as that leaves me freer to comment about other people we both know and without fearing it can be passed on etc. So it's all good.

29 August - Salsa & Sins

I could take it back about carnival. It was on the doorstep. We did old people's routine by weeding front garden on the Sunday as people streamed past on their way... then we went to meet some friends but only did the smallest of loops, ate something and were back in 2 hours. On the Monday some other friends came by and we went out with them. J. is a fabulous black girl who can dance most loosely and her white boyfriend had never been to Carnival so it seemed churlish to say 'no you go ahead, I hate it'. Again, we did the smallest of loops and spent most time at a salsa dj corner as J. has had lessons and so can do it. The other 3, are useless, though for some reason I get grabbed a lot by men who think they can make me twirl around. Well, they do, but it's never that smooth as I just can't do it. Toph can't do it either but he's been to Cuba a few times including a memorable NYE 1999 and fancies learning it. I guess he imagines it can turn into a scene from cigar rolling factory with scantily clad husky ladies rolling the tobacco on their naked thighs.

Horror! I so don't! I'm partial to tight fitting trousers and carlos acostas myself but it always feels like comedy to me. Something about the accents. Also, for a start even if we had 3 years of solid lessons/practice, we'd still be reasonably lame. Basically if you can’t get good at something you may as well not try. It would be like starting to play tennis. Or maybe I should just view it as exercise/fitness. In whcih case Bachata (a slower version) seems more manageable to me, though there’s plenty venom on youtube from people commenting that it’s all 'mierda' what is shown/lessons etc, and not the real thing according to them. But seems fine for me. But I also have that snob thing that it's always when people turn 40 that they turn to salsa. Why? What's wrong with the Chemical Brothers?

However, the main problem is ... the music... I find all things latin pretty boring after the first half hour. Same with reggae. Even in situ and with margarita or mohito in hand. I understand that it may be different for men. They get to see plenty of hips and booty shaking and they get to hold the ladies by the waist or close to them. This is especially good for later. It's an acceptable dance that old people can handle and let's face it, 'bout then, they'll need to hold flesh as their own partners will be increasingly infirm or dead. The same could be said about older women ie. me, but I'd rather take up knitting.

I was surprised to find myself 'dancing' next to a gal I know who is the last person I thought would be salsaing as she's a Vivienne Westwood dark girl and sings demented stuff. She was not remotely a pro but was happily shaking it about with some Argentinian boy. She was very merry. I had been drinking my own mix of Wray & McKay and coke which was said by those who tasted it to be extra strong, but it had no effect on my getting down with the latin moves. I'm immune.


Anyway, we were happily back at the ranch as darkness fell and so avoided the streams of bad boys clashing with police by Ladbroke Grove station from 8pm onwards. Those guys just come looking for trouble when carnival is over and it's just a shame. Though nobody got stabbed for a change.

27 August - Concealer

Concealer is my new best friend. I mean, I’ve had the same little pot of Laura Mercier’s for the past 5 years and it’s still full but from now on it will be much more useful to me. Not only do I see deep vertical lines on the side of my mouth, which are not going to be helped by concealer, they more like need restylane but we shall see, but no, I now have age/liver spots. 4 to be precise. . Most people have them on their hands. I have one that’s been growing on my cheek. Such is luck. It is now the size of a pea. And the other 3 are under by eyes and two seem to want to join up. This of course means that it looks like I have dark circles under my eyes, which of course I do. So out comes the concealer. Especially as if I forget to cover the main tache, that’s all that’s looking back at me from holiday photos. Hate it. However, it gets brushed off easily as I must touch my face plenty of times and so… Let’s just say that those potions that promise to fade them, just don’t work. Must ask Michael Jackson for his brand of discolouring cream. I bet it’s not sold in regular salons or chemists.

My doctor is seeing me frequently these days. Always with stuff that’s small - I had a tiny tag removed from inside my lower lip recently for example - and am sure he/she probably just wants to say ‘learn to live with it, there’s much worse to come’. He/She probably thinks that if I’m to take every single thing that’s sure to happen to heart.. I’d be taking up a lot of their time. But I’m a private patient so they have to just deal with it. I must be the only person on the planet that ask rhethorical questions such as ‘but there must be something one can take to stop/delay a decline in eyesight, loss of collagen, loss of cartilage, loss of bone mass’ and so on. But… there MUST BE! And why are people spending time curing cancer, going to the moon and not fixing what I care about?????

25 August - Tube & Toph

For once I get on the tube in the morning with Toph who’s heading to a godforsaken place for a few days. It’s in the UK and it’s on the coast but it’s dire. The kind of place that scored #2 on the Obesity guide/scale of the UK. Somewhere in Scotland was #1 And a friend of mine who went to the Shetlands for a holiday was surprise-snogged by a bloke 20 years younger than her 56 because she thinks that at size 16 and with nicely coloured hair she looked a damn sight better than the size 20 rough locals. But I digress, fat doesn’t equal rough but in some places it does, maybe the sugar and fat in food alters your mood and makes you … rough. I digress.

We get onto a packed morning train. He refuses to take it off his travel bag and put it on the floor. It’s bulky as he’s going to catch a train and has clothes, books, shoes etc. in it and he also has another shoulder bag with paperwork and the like.

He says he’s balanced that way. I say maybe so but you’re obstructing other standing people. He still refuses to take it off saying it’s only a few stops. God, this is awful, he’s now one of the people I absolutely hate on the tube on a daily bases, as the bag once placed on the floor allows for more movement/space in a crowded carriage and the jerks who just stand there with bags hoisted on shoulders or backpacks are just jerks. I always aim to make my body as thin as possible to allow more room. We’re all trying to get somewhere I nudge one more time but he sticks to his stance and it’s not worth parting on frosty terms because of this. But what are you supposed to do when you realise that (just for this instance I hope) your man is one of the ones you hate with a vengeance when travelling to work???????

22 August - No no no

Just don't make me walk anywhere near the Carnival. Please please please, I have given already. Like, last year for example. In fact had told the whole world I'd be home at Toph's nearby so they could come visit and relieve the tedioum of the supid steelpan music and the rubbish everything else, but nobody came. Clearly my friends have better things to do.
But cannot leave London this bank holiday as have a relative here who needs looking after and, I'd rather plant a forest than be near the stupid thing. There is nothing to celebrate, it's just an excuse to sell you food you never think of eating the rest of the year.

21 August - Little Italy & Living on a prayer

I go to a 37year old b’day dance at Little Italy in Soho. I recognise the owner from twenty years ago. I tell my host that there was a time when all we had was the Soho Brasserie and Bar Italia and that when Little Italy opened it was great as was possibly before Conran revolutionised how we eat in London. But am hazy about dates. She doesn’t care. The place on a Thursday night is not so much about food as about cheesy music. Tony Bennet, Frank, … Bon Jovi!!! Yes, by the end of my evening (approximately 4 hours before the end of the others' evening), we were shouting along to Living on a Prayer.

My attempts at talking to male strangers came to nothing. I was only talking to them in order to provide them as possible dates to the various single women in the birthday party and including the feted one, and one bloke I was with. Each exchange was nice but brief. I had to conclude that I'm too old. Nobody continued the conversation /asked for my phone number. The last time that happened was at the Burberry sale and it was one of the French security guards. Ivan. See? it was so rare I still remember the name/have the piece of paper, though of course I couldn't call. Wonder if he'll be there at the next sale.... Am depressed.

Following day I write mock email to colleague who’s training to be a therapist and I pretend to need advice, and ask why men not interested no more? She replies that maybe it’s the stupid TWO gold rings (both looking suspiciously like wedding bands that I wear on the wedding finger).that deterred them. This cheers me up immensely….for a few minutes till I remember that since when does a wedding band stop anyone? And those guys were on their way to drunkenness which would have made them care even less about my honour and status. No, the stark truth is that they can tell how old I am and they don’t wanna know…

20 August - Hellboyo & Cliches'

What is it with me and fantasy? I sort of don’t get it…. Totally fails to register in book or movies.

One thing I get is hype though, or at least I recognise it easily in certain fields, music & books for example. I can’t say I’d recognise a hyped computer. But, yes, for a while had heard of Hellboy and of course Hellboy II is out any day now and eagerly expected. So I did sort of watch H1 on TV the other night but throughout it all, I did read the Sunday papers. I gave it the first 15 minutes or 20, then I switched back and forth and yes, I can understand the ironic/fun central premise and it did have good lines, good effects, good story, maybe even good characters, maybe kids do fall in love with ugly Selma Blair, (though couldn’t tell much difference from some Will Smith movie with humans chasing aliens and here ha ha, funny there’s a monster chasing other monsters and a few cliches' of this kind of storytelling exposed), but it didn’t’ seem that you know, amazing, as the hype suggests. Must have caught some mark Kermode type saying was best movie of the year etc. So you can count me out for H2. It must be a boy thing and a boy thing in a boring rainy summer too coupled with lots of marketing and hype. Maybe they feel the same about SATC, and they would be right by and large.

But I also was thinking how the world over, poor novelists for example can’t simply write a successful book and bring back the hero, shove in some new characters and follow him or her on some new adventures. Sure you have James Bond and Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple doing this and that in various books but by and large you can’t just write Pride & Prejudice 2 or 3. You can mine the same furrow but only in detective stories or some sci-fi it seems. Then again oh hum there’s my answer, you can do sequels of comic based stuff but you don’t do 21 Grams the sequel. Geez am so simultaneously clever and stupid. I go down a road thinking hey am smart with this thought and then come full circle and discover that no, I’m not.

14 August - Am winning

There will be other stuff I'll fill this blog in restrospectively for the week just going... gone, but as it's lately (or always) concerned with ageing, or mine specifically, let me just record here that for now I'm winning.
You may rememeber that various friends/colleagues advised that if I just went with the flow I'd have an easier time sailing into middle earth... sorry middle age. But that is not my style, so I embarked on a bit of a war, which clearly will be eventually lost, but it's with some pleasure that I wish to record that small battles are being won. I have got the mini spare tyre under control. How? Well, by not indulging primarily. I eat normally and the odd packet of crisps and the odd chocolate or canape' passes my lips, but not the slice of cake or the half bottle of rose'. As for exercise I have not stepped it up, it's still the 3 times a week on average. Have not yet added any drugs or other potions as am waiting for the science first, ie. appointment and tests to measure up where I am on this progression.

According to a friend I'll be told that until menstruation stops completely, there is nothing they can/will do. This may be fine for me. It's not for her as she has disrupted sleep, tinnitus, sweats etc and she's the size of a 6 months' pregnannt woman but still fully regular with her monthly blood and so... go home and just sit it out is what they recommend. She's however a different person to me. She's had her tubes tied a few years ago as she was mega fertile and didn't want any more children, and she's convinced they sort of tied them up and kept them in a perpetual state of pregnancy. Her body is swollen with oestrogen. So she wants them untied but that means going private and £1.5k at least. Life is hard.

However - and are you bored yet? - one thing that makes a major difference to me at least is that the abundance of sex means that you're never feeling bad for that long. As we know, looking at oneself in the mirror post coitus always makes you be more appreciative, you know, you go 'Not bad!' as you twist and twirl around. Men do the same I think, you know shake their penis about and pull popeye muscle poses etc. So, so long as that doesn't dry up the waist doesn't look too bad. Though am not giving up the side bends and hoola hoop type twists, and the side crunches and so on.

But just thought I'd let you know. Grab nearest available shag if regular partner not in situ and 'exercise'.

And yes, am a little smug. Do forgive me...

10 August - Wrap around

Have noticed subconscious shift in clothes which have changed since weight gain round midriff. Am now buying loose jersey cotton dresses, some are even that boring version of pinafores of yore…the wrap arounds. I’m going older lady, though the provenance is cute Paul Smith’s or plain stuff for 16 year olds at Petit Bateau. In a short space of time I’ve acquired 4 dresses in this shape. It’s fine, they’re sort of euro elegant, can’t go wrong etc, but I definitely see what they do well, ie, make the tummy less noticeable, plus they’re lose so you don’t feel tight on your problem thereby thinking about it more than you already do and, joy, they could serve you well for the next few years of incremental increases. Oh no!

This however seems like a better option (boring) than buying anything recommended in magazines. I have watched on internet the fashion picks for Autumn (or is it next Spring?) – what the buyers are buying from Paris fall shows and I don’t like any out of 34 looks they picked. I guess top fashion buyers get bored and have to pick stuff that appears to be novel, but frankly the stuff is horrendously put together, and even if you took a jacket here and a skirt there, it’s still nothing I like. No wonder I have style but I hate fashion.

8 August - Gyno Spas & Listening Booths

Love the internet, part # 387. Am cruising to find some info for a colleague re cupping treatments and I come across a spa that offers vaginal and gynaecological treatments. Like you know, you can sit on a chair with a hole in the middle and have herbs wafting up. Sure, it’s probably something tribal done here and there, after childbirth apparently in some cultures. Is there no marketing aspect left uncovered? There’s a treatment for everything. It's all gone service industry. I read of a woman who gives massages after attending only a 1 day course (it was one of those how I changed my life type articles – don’t ask, I occasionally still fall prey to reading mags, especially if given away free at my gym.

I have a better idea. I’m going to set up a booth or not even that, just me and a sign on the floor, saying I’m here to listen and for £5 for five minutes I’ll listen to people’s problems. No advice given, just listening. A pound a minute in my lunchtimes could be quite profitable over a month.
And you don’t need a licence, just a lot of front!

Am serious, there’s a recession, people are upset about stuff. Though maybe not in London yet. Tried to book tickets for Guys and Dolls at Sadlers Wells and it's totally sold out, so are other plays etc. I thought people were economising and ordering pizzas and dvds rather than going out but clearly not.

And I need to raise cash anyway. For example if everyone who reads this blog gave me a pound, that’s £20,000 there.. or make that 50p? are you up for it?

7 August - Music & Love

What happens with music these days is strange. When it comes to classical I don’t remember s hit. I could listen to the same Bach over and over and every time it’s sort of new.
What happens with old pop/rock/any other modern genre, is that I never really want to go listen to something old, even if I have loved it at the time. Having dragged over from my house to boyfriend various containers of cds, I simply am not inspired to play anything. Hands up anyone who goes home and thinks, oh yes, Radiohead’s OK Computer, I fancy some of that. Didn’t think so.
So what I do is buy new music. Not an awful lot but I do, or borrow it. And I do listen to it. Especially at work where the discreet headphone is not easily spotted.

And some things I like, think they’re great in fact (Estelle’s album anyone? How fresh is that? Pretty damn marvellous), but then I take it home and it just sits there. Same with anything else like Duffy or The Zutons, or, or , or. And there’s lots I avoid buying because a few choice tracks have served to tell me I don’t need to hear more. And then there’s the stuff you catch in passing (some Culture Show featuring Metallica) where I actively thought oh my god it’s a dirge! It’s an old dirge! How could anyone still give these guys the time of day? Youtube has a lot to answer for. It may work in making people sample stuff and go buy it/download it but also has the reverse effect. Having spent about an hour watching paint dry (funny paint though) in the form of Dave Gahan in his home studio in NY or LA or wherever and heard snatches of what he’s working on, I can tell you that it’s hardly going to set my world alight and I’ll pass.

I think it can never happen just because of the music anymore, it has to be linked to the artist and some form of peer group belonging. Without the allegiance to oasis vs blur (not that I cared then, maybe clash vs other punks perhaps) and taken only and purely as music you hear, it just doesn’t push enough buttons to warrant repeat listening. Even when we’re in the car, we listen to the radio to at least have them supply variety and artists we don’t know. The dozens of cds kept in the car just bore us even if they’re recent.
Weird that. Nobody told me it would be like this….

Come to think of it, it’s the same for love. Nobody falls that hard for anyone when they’re older. If they do, they’re fools, you know the one, you all know one. The professor who falls for the student, the guy who chases after some unobtainable wife of best friend. It’s not so much falling in love as creating drama to stave off thought of death. So that going out with x rather than y is a bit like, you know you wouldn’t notice too much if someone came by and switched the record you’re listening to, to another one, you’d take in your stride. Not trying to rain on anyone’s parade and am not a major cynic, just a minor one, but truly, think about it. How many people do I know who are now in relationships where they are not prepared to die for them so to speak (or have a fight because David Bowie is better than Iggy Pop or that sort of thing. Ok. Maybe I’m the only one knowing what I mean here so er…. I’ll end this post here.

6 August - Houses Schmouses

I never get a headache. Very lucky that way. Of course I lie, I have them, but ever so rarely that I couldn’t tell you when the last one was though I remember one when I was studying a few years ago for a course and then another one when I tried to give up coffee but not a recent one. So it’s fitting that the day I embark on my first property viewings in 21 years (er, yes, am one of those people who really hasn’t moved address despite quite happily gypsying about here and there), it takes only 4 flats in the same area and whilst being ferried about by nice estate agent, to saw the seeds of an almighty one. I made the mistake of taking some Anadins that were in my purse, instead of immediately purchasing some Nurofen so the bastard headache had about an hour to run before it subsided and by this time I had taken to my bed as they say and even had tears running down my face when the caring lover came to stroke my hair and ask what he could do. The answer was nothing about the headache but if he could kindly get me another 200k that I never will have to return and so I don’t have to borrow that much from a bank blah blah.

But making a choice would be just as impossible if you had a million instead of half that amount for example. Or 2m instead of 1m and so on. You’d still be walking into places that each have some aspect of what you want but not all together and so you have to forego them. Whilst worrying that you’ll never find a place you’re happy with or you’ll just pick one out of being tired to look and then you won’t be happy and so on. A bit like you do with boyfriends. The truth of course is that you get used to anything (how long would you spend harking back to what could have been if you picked the house with the north facing garden instead of being bloody minded and if it's not south facing you don't want a garden at all?) but still.

The headache was compounded by all that fretting over you should borrow money when the interest rates are such and such and so on. Oh and I still don’t know which area I really want to be with. Though that’s hardly ever bothered me before, have house, travel to other spots in town, where’s the problem.

Ok that was 4 places visited (and about a million internet details viewed) so for now I declare a moratorium on my search. How quickly I give up heh?

5 August - Snags & Cardies

The snagged cardie. So, am wearing the most perfect black cardie, 75 silk , 25% cotton. I ‘m loving it. Day 1 of its life in my hands. Last weekend I changed handbag to a lightweight one I use on holiday, it’s boring so I threaded a matching beaded velvet belt though the handle. Never had a problem with this as usually it’s worn in hot weather and there are no cardies involved.
I think you can already tell what happened.
I’m going to see some properties with an estate agent, so there’s a lot of getting in and out of the car requiring removal of handbag from shoulder in order to put on the seat belt. The first one is the worst. A huge snag on the shoulder. A long thread which will never be fixed, though I can catch the lose thread and bring it to the inside of the cardie, that I’m an expert at, I do it everytime is wear a silk knit and scream at the damage and thank the lord it’s not a missoni, in fact it’s worse because I tend to wear block colours and you notice it more in that case.
A little later it happens again. When I get home I notice a few more smaller snags on the shoulder and basically to me, the cardie is ruined, it is no longer favourite cardie, it’s shoddy now.
The next morning having threaded the threads back into the reverse, I put it on again because well, we always wear new things a lot in the early days and I shoulder the same bag. It is such a reflex action that by the time I move the bag, I’ve snagged it some more.

Only now, 6 snags later, do I take the cardie off. This defeats its protective function to walk out in the cold air with a sleevless top on and cardie in hand but I I have no time to revert to another, safer ie. smoothly coutoured handbag. I must be stupid. Like those people who know the monster is in the basement and forget and go down there to get a bottle of wine.

This also happens with light coloured bags who get soiled by the denim coming off your jeans onto them or denim streaking light coloured and absorbent shoes (Denim is the devil and as you know I hardly wear it but this happens when I do).

Don’t talk to me about famine and eco disasters etc. I care about my clothes.

4 August - My First Fat Summer

Remember that movie ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’? Well, I have come to think of my mini break in Majorca as ‘My First Fat Summer’. Prior to now, despite various physical flaws, namely cellulite thighs, I have never had a problem donning a bikini. Surely, there’s always been plenty of babes on beaches that I could never measure up to, but I never have had the ‘Oh dear, time to wiggle out of the clothes and be naked’ fear. Hell, back in 2000 I scored the absolutely bestest/handsomest young man on the beach in Haad Rin. There may have been one or two toned Israeli soldiers on leave that gave him a run for his money but I think he was in the top 3. And he was, and will always be a decade younger than me.

But I digress. All this to say that it can go on record that August 2008 is when I finally thought, this is hopeless, this body of mine is just not responding to orders and instead of considering as my peer group the 30 somethings, I know only had eyes for the 50 and 60 somethings looking either fat and plump or fat and saggy or worse, skinny and saggy. This being the north posh side of Majorca, some of these women were ‘nice’. But the best remaining thing about them was probably their hair. How often has anyone walked behind a woman with lovely hair and thought she was 30, only for her to turn around and it’s your mum? When one is in a bikini, there is no such surprise, the body below the hair is what you see, an old body. Maybe I am weird but few things horrify me more than that sagging skin women (and men) get on their backs below their bra and on their waist viewed from the back, even the slim ones. Thank god for easy tanning skin is all I could think, at least I was not bloated and white, but merele a water retentive body in a soft, nice hue.

Clearly nobody else cared about me as much as I do. Toph’s standard reply is ‘You look great for your age, better than lots of women younger than you are’. Which is nice, but it’s besides the point. There may be an element of staving off return unspoken criticism in any case as he (and our host friends) also are no longer the shape they were ten years ago. By which I mean, if they’re nice and complimentary about me, I’m less likely to say ‘jeesus, can you do something about the manboobs and the pockets of fats that are growing on the side of your waist?’. I seem to have little patience for people who simply pick at the fat and vow to do something about it but then go grab another beer from the fridge.

But it’s true nobody seemed as tormented by these thoughts as me. Add to this my friend’s son who’s 11 and tall and perfectly tight inside his skin as a boy that age is, and I was pretty much having a Death in Venice moment every day. When we were sat drinking and eating our tapas one evening in the square and son was engaged in an impromptu game of football with a bunch of other kids around his age, I was practically ready to cry at a sort of ‘It’s all gone, gone, gone’ mood that took over. It seems most of my peers just drink another glass and eat some more and think it’s not worth the fight. Maybe there isn’t just the Tibetan Book of the Dead to read? Maybe if I searched on Amazon there would be an entire sub section to console me? I thought the TBOTD was about accepting death but perhaps it has handy chapters about accepting the 50 years prior death that you’re still living, but not in the package you liked?

I wonder if it’s much different for people who always had the hung ups? Do they notice less? After all when an ampler g/friend heard my concerns about the mini spare tyre she said she’s always had one so it’s not something she’s just had to notice now?

Anywway, before anyone says 'body dysmorphia' to me... I have checked the symptoms and to be honest I only have two: - Obsessive thoughts about perceived appearance defect. and - Compulsive skin-touching, especially to measure or feel the perceived defect. So am not depressed about all this yet, just annoyed, so no need to check with a head shrink yet. I'd rather spend the money on lipo dissolve or something... HA HA.