31 July - Ecclestone

Darn, the one night I cry out from going to a drinks at the home of a friend of a friend (on the grounds of 'tiredness', do you need to ask), is when I get a text from said friend to say that Christopher Ecclestone is at the drinks since he's dating another friend of the friend.
Would have been nice to stand there and say 'But I think you're great since i saw you in Jude the Obscure many years ago on TV'. Or maybe not.

At the time I received the text I was busy shredding some papers from 1999 and re-organising others. Including the ones that show that my one and only £500 ISA (an experiment, taken out with Virgin over 10 years ago), at the most had earnt £50 and right now is worth less than £400. And you wonder why people still trust into bricks and mortars more than shares, though they don't fare much better. I quite like my 'loss'. It allows me to reply to any robot in a bank or building society who asks me if I wish to have an account or investment review, to go check their own ISAs and ask me again...

I was also busy re-arranging other old papers, letters, photos. I think the tide has turned. There's a point reached in life when you really start to think that this stuff, you can't take it with you, you kept it all this time in case someone needed to piece together your life (had you become famous as a talented something or other) and /or donate it to scholars. But... then you have to be real. There aren't attic rooms in your large estate to deposit all of these 'mementoes'. They have to go. Granted I throw one page out for 30 I keep but I try. But why is it that I find it hard to part from a tenancy contract an agency gave me ten years ago when I went travelling and rented out my property to two girls named Sarah and Anna? Or the paperwork related to a savings account thingie that matured and was cashed in 2002? What would any of this say about me to the scholars digging into my oeuvre? And am now so casual about the love letters and other forms of love communication that not knowing where to store them, they're in a drawer easily accessible by Toph. Somehow he wouldn't care to delve. The mystery we held out for each other is slowly eroding. This process of ageing means that I either know all there is to know about him and/or I don't care for what I don't know. Same goes for him, no doubt. Now I can undertand my mother every time I go home, presenting me with boxes of my life age 0 to 19 and demanding I chuck some out, which has now largely been done. All those cherished school books, gone. The diaries and stuff are somewhere in my storage and only serve to illustrate (to the scholars, not) that age 13 I had the same concerns/mind that I have now. Give me the seven year old and all that.
Tonight I'll tackle some clothes and attempt to consign to storage the tartan mini skirt that sent a few people, namely the doctor, into a frenzy of passion but sadly doesn't do it for Toph. Should really throw it away....

29 July - Drafts & Posts

Nearly the end of the month and there are about 20 drafts saved in the folder of posts I haven't got round to writing yet. I guess most people write them at home at night? Maybe that's when the mind functions a bit better. I insist in carving out time during the day but I need to be in some kind of zone before I try to marshall the silly stuff into anything a bit more engaging.

There's constant re-organising of the small world around me to do... Earlier caught myself writing as first line on a 'to do list' (and I don't do to do lists) the following: divide clothes into work and non work sections. This would save valuable time each morning in getting out of the house on time.

Amazing I should decide to do this now after a lifetime of trying and failing to get into work on time. Could go one better and select outfit the night before and failure to do that means I am not one of those people. You know the ones, the ones that have to go to a frikking job everyday. Then again only last week was talking to a freelancer whose wife is also a freelancer and he seemed to think he'd done it all wrong to find himself at 40plus with uncertainty in how to pay bills/kids college and so on. Each to his own grumbles...

28 July - Journey by Moonlight

Am reading a novel by a Hungarian writer written just pre-WWII. I've been enjoying the familiar european themes of grappling with soul of an artist trapped in burgeois life and the author's sense of humour, again very mittel European, and the fact that it's a sort of travelogue in which the characters the protagonist meets appear here and there just so conveniently. I like this sort of narrative full of funny and light observations that mask some deeper concerns and the fact he's covering familiar cities (Italy/France/Hungary/England) but with their pre-war environment. You can read a lot about the impending doom of the war but mainly I just imagined the writer was writing from own experience and Mihaly is either himself or a mixture of several of his school friends. I also liked the expositional narrative since modern books are mostly about show don't tell and I have no problems with some telling.

I tend to avoid reading reviews/info before I read a book these days. This was recommended by a friend and that was good enough for me. As am nearing the end I just thought I check him on wikipedia and all was confirmed: he had lived in London/Paris/Rome etc and so many of the slighly picaresque events surely had happened to him... But nothing prepared me for the last line. I should have known really. But I didn't. So I just burst into short tears. Fucking hitler motherfucker.

Szerb was deported to a concentration camp late in 1944, and was beaten to death there in January 1945, at the age of 43.

27 July - DYI Weddings

Was with a friend who's getting married in September and she's organising it all since she does events for a living. Her latest, recession negotiated budget is still £7k. And that's up in Scotland (presume life is cheaper there but I could be wrong) and she's getting married in a sari. For no other reason that she likes them and has one bought in India years ago. She reminisces about previous relationships and how this is better than those ones (not hard, previous long term was a drug addict who managed to spend in a few months a decent inheritance, and previous one to that is a jobbing actor /not successful musician).
She's happy, she's on her way to losing the third stone and re-styling her wardrobe accordingly. She's over 40 so she's realistic about what it all entails what with inheriting teenage stepson and so on. As an organised person, she tells me she's also ordered her own engagement ring a while back from the freeman's catalogue she's used since she was a teen. She always wanted a platinum and diamond ring and now she has it. Groom to be doesn't currently have money so why not. Am not going to ask what the groom is busy sorting out. Maybe the band? No, my friend has done that. Maybe the invites? No, my friend got those. Maybe the cars? Something?

19 July - Dubai & Hell

Article by Rod Liddle in Sun Times magazine about the impending fall of Dubai. Great. Once again I am ahead of that curve since I declared more than five years ago that I would never ever go to Dubai and I have even avoided changing over planes there on way to the East. I had read long ago how their overwhelmingly asian gestarbaiters are totally enslaved (removal of passports, no rights, anything they earn is levvied as rents for sheds they share with hundred others) and had no desire to sleep in a bed in a hotel built on their enslavement.

Ok sure I've probably stayed in places built on similar exploitation but if that was before my lifetime it's harder to avoid. But not here. And I am going to be very glad if they can't get any tourist or business to come use their shining city and it will be once again claimed by the desert.
Over the years I have never met a single person who's been there on holiday or business who wishes to ever go back, unless they've also been to Saudi Arabia in which case that comes bottom of their list. I feel super sorry for how ugly it's going to turn up once the westerners loose their dollar superiority and the real hatred of the locals towards them swallows them up but, you know, don't go thinking you can go large it over there because you'll never be accepted away from the beach and the mall. Not when you consistently insult their customs. But of course it's the ruling ranks who are at fault for their total hypocrisy in wanting the tourists, but not wanting our culture to pollute theirs.

As for the russian whores in the article who declare they'll do it with anyone but a black or an arab... I hope er.. I better stop there before I wish them something really bad. Same for the taxi drivers in the article who also declare they won't pick up those groups. It's funny, well no, tragic, when exploited people feel they have to choose some other subgroup to hate, exclude, feel superior to.

18 July - Moon & Tights

Three of us go to see Moon. One of us doesn't know anything about it and so it's great that we're all three similarly mesmerised by it and agree on how well done it is. You don't need much to tell a story. Never fails to surprise me this.
Of course it's 40 years since moon landing, but it's also 40 years since Major Tom and it would appear that Duncan Jones was born the following year. Seen some photo of him and he dresses like a lumberjack sort of... Methinks some deliberate effort to not look as former androgynous supreme father. Earlier in the week met an american actress/coach friend of friends who says she met him at a party a while back not knowing who he was and how he came to her defence when some other guest was bashing americans indiscriminately.
After the movie we head to 23 Romilly St's basement where we have half an hour before they stop serving us. We've unwittingly walked into a 19 year old disco by which I mean the dj and the punters seem on the younger side of 20. All two dozens of them. But we have our drinks and are happy to sit and watch them throw mad shapes like we did back er.. at their age. In fact, since the fashion is for the 80's, they are practicallly us back then.
There's the extremely tall, androgynous spandau ballet lookalike (anyone with a large scarf on his neck qualifies), there's the human league girls, there's the more goth ones, there's the ones in 50's garb, those were always there, there's the francois sagan one, there's the quentin crisp one, and the rolling stone one and the roxy music one, there's the obligatory asian and the obligatory black kid in the largely white majority. We are all remarking on the fact that sideways these kids are practically transparent and front on they're 22" waists. But so where we! Toph is particulary taken by the boys barnets, who are all versions of ian mcculloch. But he mentions the boys to distract me from the fact he's perving the girls.

When the dj girl sits down next to us he wastes no time in engaging her in conversation. It's her night, she asks if we like it, we say yes and Toph and D. declare they want to come back next week. Mad? why would I? They ask aloud how is it possible these kids are dancing to roxy music tracks like... weren't we dancing to stuff that predated us by twenty years? Don't you remember all those kids into sould and ska? It only takes one to say 'oh my god i've discovered this' for the others to follow. These lot are playing 7" like we would track down beatles era stuff. Same thing.

At some point Toph asks me if I would ask the 18 year old asian girl sat down next to us where she got her optical /geometric green and black tights and says 'If I buy them for you, would you wear them?' Aside from the fact I probably still have stuff in a trunk from them back days, No and No. I drag him away, this is too pervying for my liking, not before declaring that if he's fantasising he better stop since we're now in territory of below age of our friends' kids and this is how some bad stories start where the OLD adults think they may be able to come on to these kids. I tell him they don't even view us as their parents but actually older and it would be very very sad to hear ourselves say things like 'Hey, I knew phil from HL or simon from DD'. Really, really sad.

16 July - Recession defying parties

Off to a Summer party in Kinglsand Rd which the owners of some editing suites have been throwin annually. This year it rains. Shame but it's nice and they treat us well with food and drink though we're meant to wrap our food since there's no cutlery. Is this a great cost cutting idea or what? At some point I get a tour of the various editing suites and Toph who's feeling amorous declares he'd love to find a dark one to take me in but ... they're all locked up naturally unless you're with the owners who will show you round. Toph confesses he's never done it in an editing suite. And after all these years of being a director. Awww, there's always a first time. Must organise it for him....

Spend some time talking to Don Letts who's on a rant about who owns his own culture, since he's trying to make a program about fifty years of Notting Hill Carnival which the BBC has always filmed but want incredibly high fees to licence for usage. Since they pay their top employees and thei top expenses lots of dosh, it makes sense they have to raise it somewere and from use of their catalogue, but he does have a point.

14 July - Old Punks & Westway

Went to the opening of Mick Jones' Rock 'n' roll museum under the Westway. Fine evening at familiar faces. Absolutely love that despite being told get there early and despite not getting there early, there was no guest list, anyone who wandered by/in, got in. That's the spirit.

The spirit was more in evidence inside when much to my surprised the majority or half the exhibits didn't seem to be nailed down. I mean, how would you trust that nobody pockets that Clash 7" on display or tries to bring down/try on, one of the ultra iconic sleeveless shirts they wore on stage? I mean, Music Machine first album time, there I was. I still remember the dress I was wearing since it was a dark pink velour thingie which was very ill advised for being down the front getting soaked. I think it ended up round my waist and I know I took it off and wrung it of 20% my sweat and 80% everyone else. Total yeuch. God knows what time of year it was. Cold enough to freeze on the bus home. Those were the days. Toph overhears Mick Jones almost answering my thought and saying that if some of the stuff walks, it walks. Once a punk....

He does look ancient though, in a sort of malnourished sort of way and slighly dickensian. I don't see paul or topper but do see glenn matlock who always strikes me as looking pretty much unaged. I get goosebumps walking into a room decked out to be Joe Strummer's 'studio'. His spirit can't be here since it's just an exhibition but still...
However it is all short lived as after two hours we go eat at the nearby thai. The old punks were always older than I was and not really my crowd.

12 July - Hermits & Thoughts

Blimey, the Manchester Hermit aka Ansuman Biswas, has similar thoughts to mine .. check his post of 12 July on www.manchesterhermit.wordpress.com
I clearly need to go spend 40 days in the tower too, to just forget about modern life but I'd need to also chuck the computer as you can't really be a hermit if you're still communicating regularly.

10 July -Chores & Chores

Am on some kind of treadmill of constant chores and lists of stuff to be done which doesn't seem to be done fast enough. Toph sees the glass half full and constantly points out how much we've achieved. I on the contrary see only the glass half empty and the mountain to clim of what's yet to be done (am talking boring house refurbishments/decoration btw).

It seems age is turning me into someone with an OCD. I have X-ray vision only for skirting boards that need to be sanded, door frames that need to be painted, wall irregularities that need polyfilla and so on. It is extremely exhausting to give oxygen to these frankly boring aspects of life. I am tired all the time and can only rejoice in the fact that I don't have to attend also to kids going to shool or on holidays and that therefore life is still twice as simple than it would be if one had a family to take care of... but... am still tired. I sit down and I x-ray vision of dust over there that needs brushing off so off I go to eliminate it. I lie down and I x-ray vision of curtain rail that has yet to be hung up so I get annoyed that simple thing is still not struck of the to do list. Toph on the contrary seems to be tired but has plenty of energy for sex. The other day he came face to face with the unthinkable, and his plead went up ' But... but you never say no?!'

I had to say 'Welcome to pre-menopause, it may well get worse from now on'. No wonder men go get it somewhere else if women turn into the bores of the fireplace and let's face it, they can That was before i remembered though all I've read, ie that they can't really tell the difference if you're occasionally merely going through the motions. So equilibrium was restored quickly. But I'm still tired. And what planet are they on, all those people who undertake to convert ruins into castles and so on? I'd rather get the plague...

8 July - Beauty & Death

A sunny day and it's finally time to get my pedicure in the garden. L is coming over too and it's her young contact from the gym who's coming to attend to our feet. I'm only half listening when she arrives and it's Toph that follows me to the kitchen and askd 'Did you hear what she said?' , 'No'. 'She said her boyfriend died in an accident last week but she's ok doing this today to take her mind off it'. 'Oh'.

I go back out and we start. I don't want to pry but L. is asking Amy how she feels so she tells the story. In a nutshell, boyfriend was on a motorbike and waving hello to a friend when he didn't see a car either pulling off or opening a door and went flying and landed on his head. So far, so tragic. But it's only after he died that she found out he had a baby with another woman and his family was aware of it and somehow they now consier the g/friend with child the official one so Amy is barred from the funeral. She's remarkably even as she tells her story, she can't be more than 22 years old.

6 July - Glass & Doors

Clearly it stands to reason/laws of shitty world that if you're carrying in your right hand a John Lewis carrier with 2 cushions in it - yes, I hate the proliferation of cushions and would gladly take part in a stoning party for decorators like kelly hoppen or those other two who declare that on beds one should have 16 cushions arranged in a specific size decreasing fashion, but I have metal chairs in the garden and they mark your ass with a patter if you sit on them w/o cushions - and in your left hand a John Lewis bag with glass vase you bought as thank you gift for your boss's wife who hosted a lovely party for all and you're going through revolving doors and someone exiting pushes them round faster than you expected and you get caught in the mechanism... well, which arm/hand do you thin gets crushed? The cushion carrying one? Yeah right....

1 June - Bruno & Mines

Is it me or does anybody else find the Bruno posters a bit much to stare at on the underground platform first thing in the morning? Having said that, I would find staring at a woman's gusset just as uncomfortable, in fact in these hot days, there's plenty of u/wear on show.

It sort of bugs me that people like Sarkozy will go on major battles to ban head scarves/veils etc in what is a minority of users, and nobody goes on similar battles to ban idiot women for not wearing enough clothes outside of a beach/nightclub scenario. Why am I supposed to find offensive the head to toe garb of some women and not find offensive the in my face bum cheeks of some girl going up the escalators in front of me? Must be heaven for some men to perve but well done Bruno from making said men go 'yewww' when they have to see the same level of in your face body parts shown by men. Am sure Bruno offends gay men too since, not being gay himself, for a gay man to look at his poster give back no gratifying feelings.

Back to Sarkozy... is it just men who go on these crusades about what muslim women should or should not wear? I mean, it's men/priests/religious heads (always men, I mean, when's the last time there was a woman prophet?) who make some rules and it's other men who want to undo them. If am not mistaken, it's not women representatives that propose the bans or enforcements. Why is it always some bloke who decides for us? And why are people in general so uncompromising? the whole issue would be easily resolved as follows: you wear what you want but upon request for identification purposes, you lift the veil on your face. Which am sure some women would be willing to do. Instead, since it's assumed that it has to be a yes or no scenario, then the Sarkozys go the opposite way and want to pass some law making every woman stop wearing the veil. Thus creating battle lines that will remain fixed. Same for Turkey. If the religious side there agreed that the veil can be worn on the streets/to and fro the school/place of work etc but once inside can be removed, you wouldn't have all that unrest they've been having there. Besides, it's a secular state so get with it.

Diverting thoughts as usual...

And today we’re reading about landmines because a friend is going to work on them in Angola possibly. I hate the internet. In the old days, upon being told she's going to work for the Halo Trust, I'd ask her to bring me some info next time I see her, or just take her description/explanation of what it is apart from the charity that Diana endorsed. These days, I can spend an hour on the net reading all there is about landmines. I knew some already, after all had a narrow escape ten years ago or so from going to work with heather mccartney.... but having not given the subject a thought for a while, there was much to catch up. Like this...I just like his summary of lingo.. (this is in the context of a speech/letter this man gave on how come after WWII, zillions of landmines were cleared out in a short space of time and now it takes 15 years to 20 to finish a job somewhere else that matters less like Cambodia, Somalia etc. because of the BUREAUCRACY of the modern world.

....answer is simple. It often boils down to a lack of determination to get the job done – and that means a lack of determination by some of the people who run “Mine Action”. Instead managers, whether they be UN, government and even non-government, seem content to encourage millions of dollars being spent NOT on mineclearance, but yet more endless working groups, workshops, information management systems, symposia, strategies, studies, standards, plans, policies, portfolios, principled programming, processes, procedures, quality management, mainstreaming, methodologies, measurables, monitoring, quality control, consultations, consultants, courses, conferences, capacity building – and the full range of outreaches, outputs, inputs, indicators, impacts, intervention logic, linkages, gendering, thematics, logical frameworks, normative frameworks, blockages, goals and supergoals. Oh, of course, we accept that some of these are important, but Europe was cleared with simple planning by experienced practitioners, followed by action. It was “the product, not the process” that was important. Mineclearance is not difficult – it has been described as a mix of gardening and archaeology – in fact not really much more difficult than digging up potatoes or cassava – just more dangerous and requiring strict but simple procedures.