28 November - Belle & Dr magnanti

Such a shame we now know who she is.. and is it just me who thinks that yes ok, so the ex boyfriend may well have been about to expose her for cash in the Daily Mail or something but doesn't the identity revealed equal column inches just coming at the right time that there's a new book being launched which may just not have been written about said new book a month before xmas when the market is swamped and this sort of re-ignites interest?

Forgive me but I've spent too long in marketing at some point not to suspect stage managed revelations.. but anyway, happy to see you're clever as we came to realise and good looking just as you always said in a sort wouldn't notice you in the street sort of way. And Steven Sodebergh has a movie out all about expensive call girls. iIcan never get my mind round the fact men pay so much for a few hours/or a day. Though I now know someone who gives colon cleansing to rich Russians and charges the same, up to 2k a day to some of those with bullet proof windows in the Hampsted and Holland Park mansions. I mean don't these people surf the net or do their rosearch to find out that the going rate is much, much less? Why does anyone think that paying more gets you better service? It's a tube up your ass, it will always be a tube up your ass.
Is there a skiing instructor on this planet that by charging me 2k a day could make me learn to ski better than a good Ecole de ski Francaise regular one at a fraction of the price? What kind of enema does C. give? think about it, is he using and throwing away each time a gem encrusted pipe? Er wrong example, you don't want any encrustation on the bottom pipe I don't think. It just came to mind as an image.... Back to Belle, so few mysteries in life are left, I rather liked that one to last.

27 November - Thailand

Though am angry all the time, and have paid not enough attention to Toph filling me in with all his research of where we'll stay in Thailand and what we'll do when there... am of course looking forward to it. I know my boy prioritises rooms with the most fantasy indulging bathrooms, he has a thing for them, since some have the forethought of including some bench style seating arrangement that comes in handy for shower sex. And also for what food is on offer.

I'm sort of more go with the flow and feel no compulsion to look into this hotel vs that hotel, so long as my first night is sorted and then I can go explore, but he doesn't like having to move around too much which is fair enough. On this occasion we don't have enough time.

However, am angry - the theme du month - because I am obliged to make do with 13 days in all as this is all I can take right now, ahem well, it is all I have left since am a workplace rat. And then it will be xmas which never seems to have much of an effect on me. I don't really care for it... When I read those magazine features that start appearing right now everywhere, with celebs talking about how they look forward to hanging the tinsel and slow cooking red cabbage I think they've got to be joking and must be borrowing their quotes from one another, switching every year for fear of appearing unlikable to their audience by declaring a non-interest. Are celebrities ever allowed to say 'No comment/I don't have a recipe/I don't buy gifts?' Or do their PR just invent the answers after all is not like Mariah Carey reads the Radio Times and knows she said she gives everybody a perfume from her line or some such idiocy?

26 November - A Serious Man

Funny what you take away from movies you see. This new Cohen brothers one is rich in authentic detail and of course did make me laugh or feel smug in instant recognition of Jefferson Airplane songs or Santana's Abraxas (no, am not that old, it's just tha that at 13 I was hanging with much older boys who liked their hippy music and dreamt of living in California.)

Primarily the movie made me angry. Did I mention I'm angry all the time, yes? It made me angry at religion because following the rituals of the family in the movie, which are jewish, made me think of the catholic ones I grew up with which were equally bonkers and useless. The actual traditions is what i'm talking about. Learning hebrew to recite some bonkers ritual at a barmitzvah not being dissimilar to learning stuff i've thankfully forgotten in order to take your first holy communion or confirmation. who comes up with this shit and why do people fall in line and impose it on their kids? Clearly up until the 60s and 70's it was super hard to not follow what your parents wanted you to follow and god knows in some religions even now you can'ou t avoid being beaten up if you don't conform but why does anyone really abide by the stupid and complicated rituals, to prove what? And it happens pretty much everywhere , whether you have to walk 20 times round a giant stupa anti clockwise or have to genuflect at such and such a point in the service you're attending and so on. I feel like a rebellious teenager but i really have a major downer on rituals. Believe and say some prayers, fair enought but having to wear this robe or that sack on your head is just mad.

The one totally funny thing is that when the serious man of the title goes to see the rabbis he gets the same sort of 'answers' that he'd get if he went to a priest, or a guru or to a counsellor which of course is your lay 20th century subsitute. Any problem you care to bring does not have a solution. If you're able to let it stew a bit , it will sort of resolve itself one way or another and not necessarily because of your intervention and ... in time you'll LEARN TO LIVE WITH IT. And it may just seem less burdersome. That was definitely worth exposing by seeing our 'hero' receive no help whatsoever. At least the rabbis didn't charge for their time. Oh and the movie ends with a phone call from his doctor who wants him to go see him to discuss the results of his xrays which can only be you know, you're going to die. ha ha ha. yeah, funny, as I told you.

24 November - Cerebral ictus

So, I'm angry all the time that I have no time due to work stress. Or one person at said work stress to be more precise. And so it is that I get a call from a good friend to inform me of the death 2 days prior of another friend, though one I have not been in touch with or met in the last 3 years at least due to just not having enough time. Well, it's not like he's been in touch either so am not feeling that guilty on that side. I remember though seeing his name /pic on another friend's FB and hovered over whether to contact or not and then decided best not to.


Now of course I feel immensely sorry that I didn't as my chance of talking to him has gone forever. He died at 48 of an anaeurysm. He was in his patisserie which he run with his father, the 83 year old widower with whom my friend had baked all the cakes that ever marked any occasion in our group of friends at home. Not too many of mine since I don't live in that town since forever but the cake for my 40th was duly made by him. M. has eaten many more than I have, her b'days, her wedding, her daughters b'days, the anniversaries and so on. Needless to say the father is super distraught and wails why not me, since his life had pretty much run a longer course. There is no why.

P. and I were born on the same day in different years. Back when we were much much younger, there was a 'could we/would we' thing going on occasionally, which me being me, I decided to explore at... 39 one visit, when I was bored. Ahem. Realising that for P. it was a more laden, important occasion, I swiftly made my feelings known. Though, i accepted a lovely necklace which I went on to lose a couple of years later. It would have never worked due to totally different lives and expectations and the fact that I don't really indulge in .. cakes. Or spliffs which he really liked and /or listening to anyone play the drums which he did. or that fact that he lived at home though he had his own quarters and was doing so primarily out of extreme affection for his widwoer father, to keep him company so to speak. Or having a below average sized penis which he had. See, now that he's dead, if we're to believe religious myth, he can read my thoughts and know that that was the primary reason. Am not ashamed to think it, he did find a g/friend in recent years who was probably never concerned with such a thing.

No, what I'm more ashamed of, is the fact that when I received the news I was in the middle of the usual busy stressful day and had just a small window to shed a few tears and talk about what happened, call my family who hadn't been informed yet, they knew him well too and then go back to .. whatever it was. Of course am going to think about him often as and when but already the remarkable thing is that i don't have that many memories of him. The ones that come to mind are few and the same repeating and they're not that salient. We really don't mean a lot to anyone but the closest closest people.

22 November - Blogs Bleed

I read the other day that if you don't blog everyday, readers turn off. This blog doesn't have many readers and never went far in self promoting so I trust nobody is turning off in droves as they were never there in the first place. But who are the people who have time to read blogs really? Even now I still keep press cuttings when there's an article that rounds up a few and tells me they're good to read but I don't seem to have time to do so.

At some point I had an easy job and time to read at work. I now have the same job but no time to read at work or write. Won't bore you with the explanation but it's almost like having to deal with a time consuming sleepless child, albeit 9 to 5 only or 9 to 6 but it makes my mind go blank. It may also be a combination of hormonal changes due to age or body dealing with recent surgery but the time I could write at home in the evenings, I seem to have other things to do. Like going out etc. That used to provide a good source of reflections but now they just take place in my head only. So this blog is sort of bleedig to death right now, which is sad for me but since have also taken to replying to girlfriends' emails with 'Can't write now, too busy' , you get the picture.

This means also that I'm angry all the time about ... lack of time or being surrounded by crap at home due to builders not yet having completed my 'outbuildings' where all the crap can be safely stored away from view. A messy environment makes for a messy mind probably. I think I must also be angry when I sleep as I wake up tired too or just not wanting to go into work. Why does anyone have to work for so many years, why can't there be a 3 month on, 3 months off sort of arrangement? Yet when I was convalescing for a month I frittered the time away too. Well 2 out of the 4 weeks were truly 'off sick' so tiredness was body healing itself probably so I can't beat myself much about that.

On a recent session with the physiotherapist we were talking about travel costs. He said that with two kids to pay for at adult prices when it comes to flights etc. his days of roaming across the world are over so his advice was do all your travelling before you have kids. I would go even further and say do all your travels, all your creative stuff before you turn 40 as after that you're simply not in possession of enough energy or get up and go to do it. A funny thing about the physio. He's dealing with my feet, which I present to him clean from that morning shower but fresh not as they come out of flat furry boots, which am obliged to wear for now. He manipulates my feet and absentmindedly touches his face, nose, cheeks etc very often. And I think yeww, that's my feet. I have also noticed that he has so many clients that the moment one exits his room, he welcomes the next in, me or the one after me. I never see him going to wash his hands and he has nothing in the room to do so, those gels that work w/o water. So er... if he were manipulating some fat guy's groin before seeing me, that's what I'd get on my feet. Twice now have run into an erstwhile minor celeb on my way in or out. But she may not mind ever if she knew as she was on of those nobodys who have spent time in a 'celeb' jungle and so may have eaten spiders, and lain with serpents for all I know. Though I think slithery animals are sort of clean by definition?