30 April - Girls or Ducks in Baths

Still postin gon 16 May w/o editing.

I haven't seen DS since before Xmas. Time for a visit to the stunning loft. He's alone for a few days as his partner and son are in Denmark with the family.
It's lovely as usual. I walk in clutching the new Madonna album and he refuses to let me play it. He's got the new Portishead album instead and we listen to it. Eventually he relents and we skim through Madonna which, am sad to say, is not as good as the reviews had led me to believe. In fact, I pass it on the day after.

We talk over each other and he proffers this line at some point: ‘I’ve gone from being in the bath with 2 girls to being in the bath with rubber ducks and my son’. He says it with a wistful smile and he means to be funny, but I know what he means, life is cruel.

He’s fallen in love with a Nordic woman who, as default second country away from rainy London, would go to said Nordic country. He says he wishes he’d fallen for an Italian or Spaniard as he’d quite like to spend the rest of his life in those countries. It’s not so much the weather but the food. Let’s face it, Nordic country living does not throw up risotto with truffles or incredible prosciutto. But such is life and she’s a terrific mum and terrific looking woman.

On his kitchen counter there's an accountant letter informing him that they've transferred (a regular) £50k to a former business associate who he hates with a vengeance. Primarily for having managed to get a share of a business that he never contributed that much to. I know the man in question too. So DS. and I spend some time trying to work out what AC. does with the money as he and his partner live a very understated life and don't travel and last time I saw AC. he was wearing a holey jumper and looking very unkempt. I mean, if your'e over 50 and don't make an effort, it's all very close to soho dosser very soon. But I digress. I just wish I got cheques for £50k a few times a year... Extra long sigh..........

29 April - Various I just can't turn into funny stuff

Still posting this (on 16 May) as a peg to sort out later...

A pret a' manger lunch with Dr S. and his youngest child. The barrister, the couture designer and me! S’s women… Now all on the internet. Gosh, it makes fascinating reading. The barrister especially. What a story (will tell you as soon as I have five mins to detail this strange tale).

Spent time watching Youtube videos of portraits being photoshopped. My god. I wish. What’s the point in trying to look good when the standard in magazines/movies/ads is some fakes/altered images? No wonder we all love the awful shots of celebs in their real skin that the dowmarket rags use. I'm going to save some of these vids in a folder called 'Watch if you have a mood dip regarding aging'.

The lunch advice sessions for D. and J. re bad dates. They're men and they majorly fuck it up too. They need to know what they do wrong and Lisa is here to tell them.

The things the internet is good for: a friend sent a track of his to Carl Craig and He replied instantly to say he wants to hear the rest of the album! If he wants it for his label, that's going to be a very good summer for IB.

I haven't been to Primark in ages, but am passing by. I get two x £1 rings that look very yacht at St. Tropez. They're practically the use and throw away variety as any 'gold' will oxydise in a matter of hours, but I should go back and buy ten and use sparingly. I also buy a dove coloured shiny plastic handbag that will be a good match for a dress I plan to wear at a wedding. It's £6 and I kid you know, around ten women have admired it so far and two have asked me to go get them the very same. Whilst others comment 'But I never find anything decent in Primark!'. Darn, I missed my calling. I should have been a stylist.

J. and the button phobia. Could that explain the no further action with G.?

A night with Bjork.

26 April - It used to be ironic

Still writing w/o editing on 16 May.

We go for Jap food in Mornington Crescent (a fraction of the price of other places, but the batter on the tempura is not so good) and then to Koko for a friend's birthday. It's Guilty Pleasures and it's gone massive. B'day girl is loving it and I somehow by now have shoes that hurt my feet so can't get into the dancing. Toph doesn't even try.

He says, and he's right, that when Sean R. started this club in various bars, it used to be ironic. You never new what would come next on the turntable (er.. cd player) and you could have a smile or two recognising the guilty pleasures. Now it seems it's just a seamless hits of the 70's or 80's compilation or a wedding party as he reels off tunes that don't present any surprises. I'm waiting to hear 'We're family' and then I'd be off. And for the record, none of Michael Jackson's songs can be deemed a guilty pleasure. They're all great though I personally hate 'Ben' or whatever that's one called. So it's just a disco with dj on stage and a few diversions in female dancers and gay men dancing.

The place is full to the rafters and I can't get over how much money they must be making with very little lay out on their part. It’s just a disco for god’s sakes… the dancers don’t look like professionals, they prob. Do it for the free entry, some guest list for friends and a little cash. Don't know what Sean is on but he's jumping around a lot and doesn't appear to be sweating in his powder blue suit. Always was a good dresser. Anyway, don't begrudge him the success, who wouldn't milk a cash cow? Earlier coming in, I had noticed some old faces/friends of his from way back, running the show at the entrance. All my age of course, whereas the clubbers were all young/hen night sort of crowd. No longer any chance of running into someone I know or to observe some funky clad daisylowes. Nope, all a sea of migrants from School Disco clubs (bet they're soooo upset they didn't come up with the guilty pleasure concept), with various parties dressed the same hen night style. I can't knock it, they're hugely having fun and I'm glad we came, but, there won't be a next time. I'm there at the beginning of trends, never at the end. It's just the way it is and am not feeling arrogant about it.

Spend Monday listening on repeat to William orbit

25 April - Two Halves & Better than one

I have a confession to make. I've momentarily lost my mojo. So I drafted lots of blogposts and never got roudn to finishing them. It is now th 16 of May so if I leave it any longer you'll think this blog is dormant. So am going to publish all the drafts w/o much tidying up. Apologies for bad grammar/spelling and convoluted thought processes. They will be just time pegs. Here goes.

Top nights out for me have always been nights of two halves or three parters, just like old plays. Perhaps I have already bored you somewhere with the night I went to see Metallica at Earls Court, then I zoomed off to see the Prodigy at Brixton as they were on very later, and got back to Beach Blanket Babylon in time to enjoy the Metallica after show. I may be confusing nights but I think at the Prodigy I was with my friend PW who I was or had been having an on/off thing with and we kept licking each other's face in between kicking it. Or maybe it wasn't that night? I was recently post split with the married man. Or even not recently, think it took a full two years to recover or maybe it was one of those three months' hiatus where you think you've shaken off the addiction and can get it on with someone else but just to be safe you do it with an old friend? PW didn't know about the married man. Darn, where were blogs when you needed them. I can't remember shit. Was it 1995?

But back to the present… Lovely D. takes me to the press launch of Organic/good food show at Earls Court (see, there was a reason why I thought about the Metallica show, same venue) and we happily wander about sampling stuff and waiting for the dancing sheep show. You will remember they performed at a Sony Walkman launch and I was not impressed. Once again the dancing sheep fail to dance according to my standards but I nearly buy the wool just shorn on stage by the Ozzie owner of the dancing sheep (or is he Welsh? I get confused by accents). It's an acution and I get beaten at £40... Imagine my surprise later when we speak to owner and he says he sells the wool for something like £1.50 a kilo plus a shearing fee of the same and that the entire sheep he just made bald would yield just a kilo or thereabouts. All that wool for £3. Now you know how much they make on those silly sheep's wool rugs you find everywhere... Anyway, he's married and clearly not interested in D. so we wander off to the area where Giorgio Locatelli is doing a food demonstration. Asparagus risotto and asparagus hand made ravioli. He can handle both at same time.

Blimey! He's a rock god! He's cut his hair and he's still massively ugly in a sort of Cyclops way but he's ultra sexy. He's taller than I thought and underneath the whites he's wearing some top dark jeans. He talks like an Italian just off the boat but he's 'got' the stage. His sidekick (Enrico? Luca? Stefano? what was his name?) is ten years younger and taller and all around perfectly god made man material. He'd be the Ulysses of the situation. I'm mesmerised. Suddenly I care for ravioli.

When he finishes, the small crowd descends like vultures to taste the finished goods. I hang back and because everyone is so well brought up that they'd only use the spoons or forks provided for one morsel.. I grab with my hands the last raviolo which nobody had an implement for. It is divine of course but, and don't think I don't know I'm coming across as arrongant, if I doused my ravioli in as much butter as Mr Locatelli, they'd taste divine too. Never do I cook with such amount of ... fat. So it feels like I'm taking drugs basically.

But time to go, cross town to the South Bank where 2Many Djs/Soulwax (one and the same in case you don't know) and Tiga await.
I arrive and fail to locate my friend I. who's invited me. Her phone is not delivering my text messages I'll discover later. But am having a good time watching the daisylowes (my new name for the peaches/pixie generation). I spot an incongrous figure, a very talll, white haired man and keep thinking 'I know you!' But can't recall who he is. Eventually a familiar figure steps up next to him. It's my friend P. ! What is she doing here????? So I descend on her. She was next door at a Pere Ubu gig and was told by a friend to wander over. She's full of enthusiasm for the Soulwax film that's just been premiered (fab title, 'Part of the Weekend Never Dies' - I missed it) and the tall man is revealed as ex head of MTV Europoe. But of course... He's on his tod and not very talkative so we abandon him when my friend I. passes by and I grab her.

She looks good! Last time we met she was pregnant and now child is a year and a half!). She's bucking the trend, so refreshing, you see someone after a year and half and they’ve not gone to seed, in fact they look great. She's running she tells me. That's fab. We go backstage where I discover Mr Soulwax senior (father of the two bros) is, in his own country of Belgium, the equivalent of a John Peel and more well known than the offsprings. Ahhhhh. Then I talk to some manager of Massive who may or may not help with tix for the already sold out Meltdown gigs and to various other people but manage to miss the smalll and perfectly formed Tiga who I. says I should marry. Well, yes, but what would Toph say? Enough drink is drunk and we leave. She's got an early Eurostar to catch. The Soulwax boys will be in Ibiza in the summer, for shows, and they have rented a house. Could this be the year I finally make it to my holy land?

The following night it's another night of two halves. The first spent at the utterly lovely celebration of a friend's parents' fortieth wedding anniversary, held in said friend's house, which is large enough to host over a hundred people and caterers. Of course we're invited to offer a little respite from the wrinklies (the only people yonger than us are the grandchildren!) but what fine wrinklies they're! Various writers and broadcasters: Ms Bainbridge, Mr Palin, Mr Mount and that guy who was Mrs Tatcher's press officer and just wrote an hilarious book on that experience (well, the excerpts were surreal and funny, Mrs T. treating her stuff as a mum occasionally) and Lord Bragg - am I just full of myself or did he give me an approving once over??? I rather like his full head of hair.

Then I left and went to join a girlfriend's hen night drinks. Except that it was all very classy in Soho with Mohitos and ... men! Yes, the were allowed. I left before the drug taking that would have helped stay awake. I do love flitting about. One party is never enough. Bring them on.

But it's not surprising that the following day I just play the same soothing music I played for years of after parties: William Orbit, Strange Cargo. Cod clubby classical but won't let you down.

24 April - Gifts & Goddaughers

An early beneficiary of the decline in memory function is… the beloved daughter of a best friend who now lives in Rome. I sent 12 year old G. some crucially good b’day presents recently. Not on the actual b’day date you understand, I have already publicised in the past that now I cannot remember but a few dates, I remember ‘periods’ and yes, I know she was born in April. I get a sweet thank you note for the ipod speakers housed in a white patent leather handbag (perfect for showing off at a girlie party) the Clarice Bean book and a Girls Aloud CD. But she also thanks me for the Juicy Couture dress and the No.li.ta sweatshirt I’d previously sent…

Heh? Now I remember… back in Feb or was it March I had sent the clothes with a note saying ‘As you know I can never remember when your b’day falls so here’s some gifts in advance as I no doubt will forget to send later…’
So I sent two lots of gifts… Lucky girl and lucky me that I still have the touch for teens. Well… she loves them all. She’s going to wear the dress at her proms in fact (she goes to an American school). Ahhhh, am chuffed! But dotty too and that’s a novelty. I have a friend who’s always been known to our circle of friends as ‘ditzy A.’. Am sure my goddaughter now refers to me in a similar way.

23 April - Rain & Shoes

Nothing, just a quick observation that my work diary has been throwing up the following reminder for a month: 'Get summer shoes out'. Of their storage that is. Yes, I keep wardrobes separate as to have all on show/at hand, would turn the dwelling into a car boot sale.

But the reason why every day I click 'dismiss' on the reminder is that... DO YOU SEE ANY SUMMER SHOES WEATHER OUT THERE?
It's beginning to get me down, and am nothing ifnot a positive type of gal.

22 April - Thirties suck

Life may be hard at 42 odd extra years. For example, I run into a colleague who’s got an art magazine and he told me his next issue’s theme is ‘the future’ and would I perhaps want to contribute to it. I told him the future scares me. Because now there’s much less of it to f uck around with and f uck around are we still, no doubt about that. Still finding it hard to take decisions that would alter life for the better (like, disappear from these rainy shores for example) and certainly not possessing any impetuous ways any more. Everything is sort of planned and as I said plans are forever procrastinated. Till eventually you die when least expected.

But boy, is it so much better than being 35ish. As exemplified by a recent evening when I took Toph and a younger spare male friend of his out for dinner with a couple of women I know who are in their mid thirties and high achieving - (o be not achieving in your mid thirties is a sin… it’s only later that you can relax into a sort of ‘it went the way it was meant to go’ motif about your (lack of) career.

At dinner S. was giving Toph her thoughts on work – she works too hard, has just applied for a better/higher position in a rival firm but her other half of the brain is constantly telling her she should slow down, slow down, not be this hard nosed bitch who can jet off to see a fuck buddy in NY and go skiing with him in Aspen, but come back to London and on a Friday night have dinner only with the same old g/friends whilst endlessly discussing their sparse lives and agreeing to go run half a marathon on Saturday morning because they’re not busy in bed with a lover. Then they’ll have coffee and then they’ll ring around to see what anyone is doing on Saturday night etc. Which will be much the same and then they’ll go play tennis or run again on Sunday morning.

After dinner she’s still talking to Toph about all this and trust a man to spot the contradictions. In the car back he says ‘One minute she’s saying she doesn’t want a Ken and Barbie life, and two sentences later she’s saying she wouldn’t mind a Ken and Barbie life because she would like a man who’s more than a shag – she says she can get those any time. So which does she want?’. I point out that she would need to shut up first and let the conversation go elsewhere. I know she knows Toph’s taken and so was talking to him like you talk to a girlfriend, but I don’t know that away from business meetings, she can be normal with a man and just not make him part of the interior monologue about life. I also point out that Ken and Barbie are two unfortunate figures to aspire too. It’s well known that they’re both airheads with cash for swimming pools and personal horse drawn carriages but they’re not a great couple are they??? Toph says he enjoyed listening to her (gave him a chance to offload where he also thinks he went wrong in life) but that at no point did S. talk about movies, books, friends, family.. it was all ‘Should I keep working to get somewhere and how do I meet the right guy’. Not at the Walmer Castle on a Friday night counselled Toph. I disagree. We were there and we brought an eligible friend though he’s at the same stage as the girls. He sort of half wants a relationship that will be stable and has legs but he’s still not able to buy groceries for his fridge and compromise on basic stuff like participating in some sports if the g/friend likes them. No, he’d rather stick to being himself and keep his nose in a book. It can never work if it’s ‘me first, you later’.

But I also had to come off my high horse and try and remember what I was like at 35. Similarly banging on and on and on about what seemed like an unsolvable dichotomy. You have to remember that back at that age, the choice of partner is totally complicated by the ‘Would I have kids with this guy and if so, when? AS am so busy working /making progress and I want to be equal’.
It was damn easy to look at my watch at 11pm and say ‘We’re going home’ and leave the girls to it. But they chose to leave at the same time. They are Europeans so not for them the picking up drunken guys two hours hence.

21 April - Meribel & Undressed

Dandys travel light. They don't even wear a coat when they're headed to Meribel. They probably think they'll find some flunkey who will provide one if needed or maybe they don't get cold?

tbc

20 April - Pimping for friends

I have been pimping for a friend lately, because I’m reasonably good at it. G. and g/friend split up around Xmas and it had been a long time coming, basic incompatibility I diagnosed, despite strong mutual attraction As it took a while, when it ended, he wasn’t exactly heartbroken. In the meantime he had met a woman through work and they’d gone to dinner a few times in a town where they both find themselves working, she during the whole week, he a couple of days a week, not every week. He was smitten, though it took this lady two meetings before she disclosed she has a boyfriend of 15 years back at her hometown. Sort of historic boyfriend who never visits her where she works and probably doesn’t understand her anymore and who has yet to marry her and she wants to leave him but….

So, of course she’s unavailable and of course he’s smitten. I point out that they only seem to meet at drinks or dinner and it’s kind of hard to get a full picture in the cosy limbo of expensive restaurants. They like each other because they can talk and talk and he buys her dinner but they don’t know much about each other really. I suspect they’re both lonely in the city they have to work in and provide a great respite from tiny flat for her and hotel room for him. Still, after 3 months of dinners, drinks, constant texts and emails declaring ‘you’ve changed my life, you’re my god’ and gifts from him to her, she’s still not gone further than some taxi snogs with him.

I think she’s treating him like the gay friend and she’s the one who goes home at the w/end and shags her boyfriend who she wants to leave but .. blah blah.
Eventually he reaches the point and gives an ultimatum and decides not to be in touch with her until she’ll have sorted out her situation one way or another. I predict she’ll stay with boyfriend. In the meantime he’s truly upset. For something that never happened! This must be like what courtly love was all about… Courting and hopes…

So time to take action and distract G. At a party in London I introduce him to J. who’s a high flying PA to movie directors and jets off to NY and LA often enough. I don’t know her at all (friend of a friend) but he likes the look of her and so they arrange to meet. I predict second base will be reached in no time but I forgot she’s 35 and so she’s also playing the long game and in order to do this, there’s no concessions except some minor snogging and once again he’s busy dropping hundreds on dinners and cocktails. J. sweetly buys breakfasts at the w/end but .. not post sex obviously. And after the breakfasts she’s off to Harrods for a massage in her cute BMW and he has nothing to do but read the Sunday papers with us. He finds himself invited to some wedding with her in Portugal, or to NY where she stays at the St Regis or to the forthcoming wrap party for latest movie. Clearly he’s interested and intrigued but his mind is still on the unavailable one… and was considering J. only as a one off, whilst now he’s being sucked into a relationship that hasn’t gone sexual yet.

In the meantime he’s being told off by a female director in his company who he’s close to because she says that J. is not blue chip career enough for G!. How dare she criticise my r ‘n’ roll acquaintances? I think she’s jealous. And she’s just moved out of her boyfriend’s flat. Another 35ish… Scary times.

Time for more distractions … this time I take him to dinner with a hedge fund lawyer I think he’ll like the look of if not the lifestyle (she’s very extra sporty and he doesn’t do sports, she’s very intense and he’s very laid back, but you know, am hoping chemistry will do the trick.)

However at dinner it’s clear that they’re not in a hurry to speak to one another. They’re not sat opposite each other. Darn, I didn’t manoeuvre that fast enough. He talks most dinner to A. who’s opposite him but she’s recently hitched up so I doubt she’s interested. At the tail end of dinner this other woman L. who I don’t know but is some kind of consultant/accountant friend of A. turns up and boy does she wades straight in. As a confident 37 year old she probably thinks that she has no allegiance to the other woman who invited her along…She ends up monopolysing him the rest of the time at the bar and then they disappear off to a club from which he returns alone at 3am. Snogging took place again but no deal.

Now, am beginning to suspect he doesn’t know how to close a deal, or is a very bad snogger or… he’s still thinking about unavailable woman, to really take a step in another direction.

Which will it be? He’s back again next weekend and this time he’s going to tell J. he has nowhere to stay and let’s see if she finally takes him home? As for the wedding in Portugal, I’ve advised he should go only if guaranteed that there will be top glamorous/interesting people in attendance, otherwise, why bother. Have become very straightforward with my advice these days.


But then I get a pang of guilt about the women.. Little do they know how many he’s juggling… but of course he’s not doing anything wrong. All is up for grabs and he’s not getting laid.

19 April - Photos & Angles

There’s relief in shared misery. I’m still thinking about younger guitarist in band I saw last week. Come to think of it… he can’t be that young but I’d say under 40, anyway, he looks young.

Coincidentally best friend sends photos of herself and her two sisters in law in NY recently when they were there to shoot new ad campaign for their fashion company. The three of them are the other side of 45 and older sis in law is 52. They are grinning inanely in these photos because they all have their arm round the most gorgeous man. He’s the photographer who shot the ads. I'd say he's 30. The first thing I think is that he must have been a former model himself. He’s eastern European and just too handsome for words in his rock ‘n’ roll black vest and silver pendant, and clearly knows how to work the camera. I wonder if in a rare form of 'I'll give a job to the one I fancy most', he owes this campaign to his portfolio or to himself.

The other thing I notice is that two of the women in the photos, due to the camera angle, are exposing the top of their cleavage and that makes it abundantly clear that their breasts below are just hanging there a bit shrunk and deflated in the for sure nice and expensive bras. I commend the fact that they’ve not had plastic surgery anywhere, but the camera angle is nasty. Their clothes are, as expected by fashion people, top of the trends and youthful, their make up and hairdos are also current. But young photographer would never in a million years go out with any of them… And they know it. Hanging on to him in these photos is the closest they’ll get.
I wish I was with them of course.

18 April - Hair & Glory

It was time to sort out the hair as highlights are needed in advance of three parties this week and a wedding next week. New random hairdresser, as you know, I have no loyalties… We chat about this and that ie. nothing. As she comes to blow dry it straight, I tell her I do actually need a trim, I know that, but have no time right now or cash for it today and she agrees that I do need one asap, because my layers are a bit untidy and my hair is ‘very fine’ ie. it drags down as it’s long.

Her words are true but I hadn’t really noticed, and am very upset. I still have a nice full head of hair but there was a time when you’d have never described my hair as fine. It wasn’t thick like hairdresser’s (she seems Turkish or Greek) but it was most definitely not fine. This is clearly a result of ageing. Yes, there are supplements and the lot but… there’s also all sorts of growth hormones (available in the USA but not here I don’t think) that one could take to slow the clock (see Cindy Crawford for proof) but damn, why? Why does hair have to go? I don’t mind disappearing neurons that make eyesight decline.. well, not that much, but hair? After all these years of lavishing care and money on it.. surely it should just last longer? I’m going to start wearing a wig when it will become thin as well as fine. I’ll be like Joan Collins. Clearly people can and will laugh at the pretence, but I hate seeing older women sat on the bus and I can see their scalp. It’s horrid.

17 April - Surgery & Facials

I run into a friend have not seen since before Xmas and can't stop staring at her face. It's so different, she looks amazing, she's had something done for sure but we're not grade A and so I can't actually ask if she's had surgery. I mean, I say 'Wow you look amazing' in a very incredulous voice and she chooses to ignore the obvious inferred query and just says she feels well rested lately... Mmmhh, she's an over 50 and doing a bit of a Madonna perhaps ie. denying. No amount of rest erases that many lines.

A little later I have lunch with the consultant surgeon friend who's had a knee operation recently and so was on the receiving end of anaesthetic and he tells me he had just begun to form the thought 'oh so this is what x/y/z anaesthetic feels like...' (which of course he's had administered to his surgerees many times) and he was out before he got half way through the thought. He confirms that anaesthetic is the most dangerous part of any surgery and he's seen it go wrong plenty of times. So, er.. that's my story. I will not ever have anything done because dying of a silly complication is not worth it. Ask Puff Daddy's mother....

16 April - The Manager, The Agent, The Drummer and so on

It would be easy to infer that we had a rock’n’ roll life if I tell you that at a recent gig, me and two girlfriends totted up the following: one had had the band’s manager, the publisher and the manager’s best friend plus she had a snog with the singer. One of us had had the drummer. One of us had had the agent and the art director and sort of it never happened with guitarist #2 (they’ve changed a few). All of the above happened during a stretch of time and not concurrently or simultaneously for that matter. Two of us now would love to do the guitarist #3 and the singer. One of us was sort of ‘flirted with’ by the bass player. It must have been a fun life we had and it’s a band we’ve seen many times/known for years.

But in the cab back R. says she’s so excited to be going to work tomorrow in the same clothes she’s wearing today. She’s staying the night and has not brought a change, though could borrow from one of us. This has not happened to her for a while and will make her colleagues think she’s got lucky. In reality when we get back, she’s showing me pictures of her two dogs on her phone and making cooing noises. She’s mid-thirties now and she makes frequent referenced to the fact that she’s old now.

At least we can laugh at shared stories. It’s when the witnesses to your life disperse that you start to question whether anything ever happened. C. writes me that her mother mentions something she did 29 years ago. C. and her best friend had ducked out of boarding school in the country for a rock n’ roll day in London as both were having a thing with someone in Thin Lizzy I think (they were precocious) and C.’s father had actually seen them but decided not to say anything and let them experiment with freedom. I was not around then but I know this story. But C’s best friend from those days is long gone and this story is considerably less funny told to me, than if she were laughing about it with her co-cospirator. She says something about writing it all down and I tell her not to bother. I occasionally dip into this blog and re-read some earlier entry and because I use initials rather than full names, I find that it takes me a while to work out who that initial stands for… and the anecdote has very little value past the event.

For example at a recent 60th birthday I ran into various people I used to work with 20 years ago (more or less) and because they’re all 2 to 10 years older than I am, I never much hung with them. But I did to an extent, but I remember no highlights, no special episodes. Back then there was also some issue of seniority so perhaps it wasn’t the done thing for a director of something to be a friend of mine outside of work. Now I see how time has levelled everyone. The following day I did go check them all out on their various websites, and whilst nothing major has changed in their work (unlike an ex colleague who was a General Manager last time I knew his position and is now a drugs counsellor! I have to wonder what their levels of satisfactions are and if they’re happy where they are especially if they compare themselves to other contemporaries they work with. It’s one thing having done very well out of being U2’s PR spokesperson for example and one thing being Larry Mullen I’d have thought. And if your husband is a great photographer but he’s never shot a U2’s cover despite the close association, has that ever upset you? But these are topics you cannot cover if you’re not a grade A mate.

14 April - A child in time

A. sends me a sad text to remind me it was her father’s death anniversary and to say that her boyfriend R. had turned up, with excellent timing, not, to tell her it’s over. He’s much younger than her and had lasted a good 5 months but eventually used the easy excuse that one day he may want children and she can’t have them –at 49 people finally stop saying things like ‘But there’s so much that can be done these days about fertility blah blah’. And so he told her, they better stop seeing each other now.

It’s a very logic thing to say, but I always want to say to guys ‘How do you know you’re going to have any, how do you think you’re always going to have the option?’ . I guess they don’t read too many articles about the decline of male fertility and the rest in the Western world. But, it’s the perfect way out. Poor A., she’d always thought it wouldn’t last… and it hasn’t. I’d like to know if anyone every takes any stats about how often there is a happy ending in things that look like they won’t have one from the outset. And would it stop anyone from trying… A. says she’s not broken hearted and it’s agreed, we’re all past broken hearts in our forties. It would simply seem unseemly to have not yet insulated against one.

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…

12 April - A shore too far

Sometimes I think that giving up my nort east London abode to move West has basically turned Shoreditch into a foreign country to me. Despite the fact that several of my friends live East, the trek takes an hour by car. So if you're invited for a brunch at 12 on a Saturday at Shoreditch House, it means leaving West at 11am which is tad too early for me to get out. But it has to be done because 'over there' is lovely. Especially when meeting J. who's such a solar character that even on a day of alternating hard rain and rays of sunshine, being in his company just makes you feel rosy and cosy.

He's trying to get us all to go on a little road trip in Spain at end of August but ... only A. has taken him up on it and A. is a boring (well met him twice and he's still not managing to remain memorable in any way in my mind) architect. The rest of us want to go but can't quite manage to sort it out which is a major shame as half the time I think it would be great to travel as a little possee intent on mischief along the way from Barcelona to south of Valencia and beyond, (think of all the adventures we would have, splitting into smaller groups, enticing new people into the group, observing budding rellationshops with locals or othewise), and the other half I can't square it with the desire to be alone in Sicily with the loverboy who would be top company as we taste tomatoes in Pachino or sit in the shade of an ancient house in Noto or eat an icecream in Syracuse. Why can't I have it all ways, both ways, three ways etc?

tbc

11 April - Sony Walkman & Johnny

Went to launch party of new Sony Walkman (well, we have fond memories of life before an ipod) with Jody Harsh probably earning quite a bit for 20 mins of djing and some photo opportunities and Johnny Borrell performing an acoustic set in place of the now behind bars Pete Docherty. My friend said ‘the cast of Sklns is in the next room’. I answered that I wouldn’t recognise them if I fell on them. I have watched a couple of episodes and one centred on a girl not knowing what to do about being pregnant at 17 or whatever age they are. I remember thinking ‘Not a problem I identify with’ and switched, but the actress was very good. As we screened the rooms for bodies of our age, we identified only the sheep farmers from NZ with the dancing sheep already on Youtube. We chatted to them and they invited to a forthcoming Home show at Earls Court. D. really liked one of them so she’s already arranged for tickets for us… it seems that I’m now going too as was original witness that she’s met her future lover to be. On the net I found out he’s only 36, sleeps in his truck, smells of dung (his words not mine). Clearly they have a lot in common she being a sophisticated extra well read political animal.

She said as we queued to go in behind a Sarah Harding lookalike with orange skin and huge eyelashes, ‘I wouldn’t want to be a Pr girl if you paid me’. I said dude, they’re 20 odd years old, they’re loving it, that clipboard has magic powers, they try to invite who they would like to meet, maybe one of them dreams of marrying one of the boys in Skins. The boy in the queue in front of us announced to clipboard lady that he’s from the London Lite and is looking to introduce himself to, let’s call her Suzanne. A flurry of she’s not here but she’s inside she’s wearing grey follows or better still let’s escort the young guy and off he gets taken down the parade of paparazzi who clearly don’t flash at me and D. as we walk past. He must be feeling like royalty. He’s cute, in his prime, staring at a career at whose pinnacle he may just rub shoulders with Lindsay Lohan or some such.

Conversely D. tells me about her 40 something friend at the magazine who cannot stand to do another celeb so called interview ever again. Well of course, all you get is tosh, you’re not writing for Vanity Fair so you’re only getting the Pr line on whatever they’re pushing, and even VF is so controlled and manipulated you couldn’t say a thing about anything you observe that’s controversial or you couldn’t express in your article an opinion and say that JLo is mental to spend hundreds of thousands on her 2 babies’ rooms and so on.

Once inside and after the few lovely drinks and happy that we found the tokens to win a new Sony Walkman (gorgeous it is, has wifi so technically if I’ll ever understand the instructions which seemed very complicated but then again I was reading them on the tube home and I was not all there, I’ll not have to download anything but just ride on young people’s hip selections) we witnessed the acoustic set by Johnny Borrell.

He is simply gorgeous, I take it all back (have a 40 something mother of two friend who’d like to stalk him and I simply didn’t understand why, now I know). And he was very gracious to this little nothing of a French girl with a ukulele called SoKo who was drafted into singing along with him and bashing a drum kit for his acoustic performance. He has a fantastic voice. Ok, I still don’t think I’ll bother with a Razorlight album but, wish he’d taken me home instead of French girlie (gossip on websites today, not terribly good gossip but still). Instead, we stretched it to 10.30 to claim our prize and fled into going home as fast as possible. It was a Thrusday after all and today my bones ache and I can only imagine it’s the mint juleps and the wine that did it.

8 April - Itches & fine yarns

There is a god. My friend is going through the menopause and one side effect is that she’s become allergic to wool and not only to generic wool, but to the finest too. So I’ve inherited her cashmere which currently gives her scratchy fits on neck, shoulders and arms. She says silk is having the same effect. Wow! Am not complaining. She’s taken to not wearing any jewellery either, it all becomes slippery in the sweats. I tentatively ask for some gold. She says she’ll have a look.

This is a bit sad though, there must be something one can do to avoid this. We have to search the internet. I wonder what would happen to me? Will I also have an itch for the best fabrics ever and have to resort to wearing nylon? I’d rather go and live in a cave than do that.

7 April - Glast NOT

I knew it, am a trailblazer: I decide to ditch Glastonbury and the world follows. This year the tickets are not selling quite so fast. People have finally cottoned on that it’s a vast, commercial shopping centre style experience… without a roof to protect you from the unkind elements.

And Jay-Z headlining? How radical. Not. Who thought of that one? When did it ever seem like a good idea? When did so called urban fans ever go to Glastonbury? Did anyone every look around at the composition of the crowd?

I’m extremely pleased with myself for not going for the past 5/8/10 years and thus having avoided Macca headlining last year (I think). Oh and the mud. But even if the sun was roasting you, it’s still gone too far, too commercial, too full of the wrong people. Just say no.

5 April - Cigarettes & alcohol

The things we do for friends: one night this week I sat in a friend’s living room when two other friends arrived and all three of them chain-smoked for 2 hours. I usually say it doesn't bother me and it doesn't ... not much, but this was a confined space, so I got up a couple of times to open an external door and after a few minutes it was closed again as it was cold outside. Clearly I could not ask them to move to the garden as it was 3 to 1 and it is his house. More than for my health I was worried about the smell on my clothes/hair. I hate to have to wash my hair just to get rid of stink.

But… I have now thought of a cunning plan. His beloved dog was also in the room inhaling all the smoke and well, he wouldn’t want to give his puppy cancer would he? I must point this out next time the situation arises. But how to break the following habit? My friend was mildly pissed that evening and got more so as another bottle was open. He says he smokes more when he drinks and viceversa. That old chestnut. Any advice? Quitting doesn't seem to enter the equation.

4 April - Old men are jealous too

I love this one. L. has a good friend from uni days, G. who's been dumped by his girlfriend in a bit of a sudden manner. They shared the same flat and although she's moved out he couldn't bear to stay there and spent a week at my friend's flat. After a week, she suggested he goes and stay at her mum's as she has a large house in a leafy suburb and she knows him. That's how far i'd got and had indeed asked recently 'How's G. getting on?' He's quite dishy this G., early 40's and with one of those faces that would have fit in an old Marlon Brando movie, you know, could have been a boxer etc, but stylish with it. He's a hairdresser after all.

So am at her house recently when he's there doing her hair and she's telling him about her stepfather being worried/jealous of him and her mother, as 'young' G. stayed with them for a month or so and according to stepdad he had it made... nice house, food, a swimming pool, why would he ever want to leave?

The look on poor G's face! To have been the cause of worry to his benefactors! And you know, it's sweet that stepfather has watched The Graduate and worries about transgenerational affairs, but L.'s mother is mid sixties and well, she looks good for her age but, not up G.'s street, never mind that he's still cut out about the ex girlfriend. Stepdad is 78 odd, so these fears/worries never leave us it seems. A strappy 40 something must have looked the picture of fitness and therefore elicit some lust in his partner of twenty odd years.

And there I was believing the faction that says that after a certain age threshold you don't care about sex and jealousy and all that. Aahhh....

3 April - Groove & Armada

I had a funny email exchange with hotlips H. She wrote excitedly that Groove Armada were playing in NYC and she can only write this to me as nobody else she now knows would even know who GA are.

I wrote back saying we wouldn't go to the show anyway as they'd probably take the stage at 2am and we now struggle to find a way to stay up that late and as it would be just she and me going and we can talk anytime we want (ie. not just meet for this occasion) and b) we have plenty of bonding experiences together already and so don't need this one to strengthen the friendship or be added to the stash of 'Remember that time we....'

She wrote I was right, and that we simply can’t afford any more to write off the next day and the one after following an all nighter with stimulants. Back in the days we'd be as right as rain after sleeping till lunchtime perhaps and brush off the monday depression quite easily. Now...we'd dread those awful 48 hours after enhanced fun. Even on a Friday when all we'd have to do on a Saturday and Sunday are pretty mundane things that can wait.

It got me thinking that the same goes for wild sex by which I mean a session that lasts a few hours. Ok so it’s a Saturday night after a great dinner at friends, lots of wine and an earlier top dynamic yoga class which released lots of energy despite the wine and we go on for a while but er.. not a few hours that's for sure.
If this happens mid-week I certainly don’t say no, heck, it’s only work I'm delivering myself to in the morning, I can go in late and/or tired and in fact sex doesn’t make me tired at all, quite the opposite but I can imagine if you felt you have low energy as it is due to stress/kids etc, you’d just wouldn’t want to write off the next day because you overloaded yourself the night/morning before.

So in the same way that hotlips H and me now sensibly say 'no' in advance to a top night out with Groove Armada, there must be lots of people out there who have a plane to catch at 7.30am and so are up at 5am and would just have sex for ten/fifteen minutes and gradually come to accept that that it is all there is. And then if this is how you do it for a long time, proposing a sesh of more complicated coreography, it just doesn't flow. Am I right? I don't know. H. is finding sex a bit of a chore as well these days as the tenth anniversary of her relationship approaches.

2 April - My kind of guy

I never said I was an arbiter of style but friends always ask for my opinion and as I've mentioned before it's a minefield. I'd like to be able to say the following sometimes:

‘It’s easy for you, you haven’t got any style’ as spoken by Vince Noir to Howard Moon.
See, Howard Moon takes no offence with that because... he knows it's fundamentally true and nothing ever will alter that status quo. Howard Moon is welcome to think that in other areas of life, he knows more, is better equipped etc than Vince Noir and so there is a balance and contentment. I would probably elaborate the sentence and say 'It's difficult for you, you haven't got any style' meaning, don't even think of trying harder, you will never lift out of the sartorial rut you're in. Just be more accepting of your limitations, and there is someone out there who will love you anyway. Now, that may not be confidence building but confidence building is overrated. You are who you are.

1 April - Fools..

Well, I believed the one about BMW cars now coming with a special sensor in the hubcaps which will release a piercing sound to scare dogs away who may want to piss against the wheels. I did think you had to be a major wanker to be impressed by this sort of gadget and buy a car because it offers that. But crucially I didn't think it was cruel to animals at all. Er.....

I didn't play any because most of them end in tears. A friend who has an unruly child who's already had problems as school, thought it would be funny to phone his wife and a) say school had rung and child now excluded for a week and b) said he himself had been stopped by the police for speeding and had his licence revoked. Wife (who's in a stressful job to begin with) just burst into tears. Men just don't have a sense of humour women understand.. on the whole.

On a slightly different tangent, a C. had been out of work since before Christmas and I had concurred with her that maybe it was time to get out of fashion, fashion is empty and shallow and all the rest and she should move into a different industry. But then I had a dream about her (I never do and I also don't often remember dreams) and in it she got a top job running the showroom of the jewellery company De Grisogno. Now, all I know about De Grisogno is that I've seen their ads in things like the FT How to Spend It supplement and I know they're based in Geneva but have an Italian name so I had been wondering who they were? A real family or a made up name and why were they so prominently advertising now when I had never heard of them? So I told my friend the dream and she said she'd contact them. But a few days later she rang because a top blue chip brand with flagship store in Regent St. had offered her the job of brand developer for their accessories range. Now, they rang her on the evening of 31 March to say 'we didn't want to call you tomorrow just in case you thought it was an April's Fool.' How nice of them. And see? I am entitled to think that I have good premonition powers as my job in the dream and the actual one are very close to each other, it's not clothes, it's valuable trinkets. Am happy for her. I hope accessories covers 'handbags' too. C's cast offs, bring them on. I was able to offer valuable advice even before she starts by saying that any new item she needed to test, only needed to be put in front of a close circle of people: me, the sceptic 'you mean they want £200 for a .... keyring?????', M., the uber adorable gay BA purser, J, the uber macho gay architect, J. and M. the straight man and woman who'd actually pay £200 for a keyring, and possibly Toph who'd just judge it on beauty and would not covet it. If all of us think it's the bollox, then it should go into production of course. And be photographed as usual on Kate. See it fly off the shelves.