25 January - James Mcavoy & May weddings

That was a good evening. A g/friend takes me to see a preview of ‘Juno’ which is hugely enjoyable and well paced and has some great performances, very credible. I was curious as a link to my blog appears on the same page of a distinguished Blogger and she also links to Diablo Cody (scriptwriter of ‘Juno’) and it kind of gives me a nice kick. When you think about it, coming up with an idea like ‘Juno’ is kind of not difficult. It’s not like you have to think out a plot, like ‘No Country for Old Men’ for example, and handle a more complex narrative, plus you can make all the action take place in one location. You only have to fake the weather (there’s a 9 months span to the story).
Anyway, yes, as with many of these things, Miranda July’s one from a couple of years back for example, you sit there thinking ‘I could have done that’. Much as I think about half the stuff I see at the Biennale. But of course that’s not the case. There’s a huge amount of determination and hard work involved and am too busy flitting about to sit down and turn up the required number of pages, plus er.. the business of selling them to someone.

Shortly afterwards I go to a b’day party for a 25 year old. Wish he was my toy-boy but no, he’s the son of a friend. I arrive at the first floor room of the chosen pub only to be told that I’ve just missed James Macavoy and Julian Rhind Tutt by half an hour. No, they’re not friends of the 25 year old but were huddled talking downstairs. Darn. I go to the bar on the ground floor and Mr Macavoy is still there wit friends and then at the bar ordering next to me. He’s unremarkable and not v. tall, not v. anything. In fact he's less noticeable than my friend's kids (the other brother just got a part in the Buddy Holly musical and he's a handsome young man if I may say so and not incur her worries. And yet, James McA is such a good actor. Not majorly good in ‘Atonement’ but good in the other ones. I saw ‘Atonement’ only recently on dvd at home and had totally forgotten the ending of the novel (well they sort of changed the delivery of it by inventing the Vanessa Redgrave interview) and I ended up crying for a good few minutes. So happy I wasn’t at the movies. Toph had the exclusive and rare pleasure of consoling me which was kind of cute. Think he was touched I can have tears jerked so easily. And by Keira who on the whole I can’t stand. Well, I have nothing to say to top actor so I take my wine upstairs, but after i leave D. gives him some of her son’s b’day cake and says he was a bit stunned by her gesture. Bless, it must be hard to have so many strangers invent reasons to come up to you.

I move on to join friends at Century. Haven’t seen them for a while as they moved out of town. It’s near Stansted but it may as well be the moon as my diary is littered with ‘Must go to Essex’ for every Sunday of Nov. Dec. Jan. And soon it will be Feb and that 90 mins journey just doesn’t get made. We’re lazy. The party has been together for a couple of hours at least and they’re on mojitos and champagne. S evolves from paying me some compliments to full on chatting me up. He has half a row of teeth missing, he’s a smoker and I can smell it, and he’s put on 2st. since i last saw him. That’s hardly going to sway me, even if the personality is good. He says ‘I’d like to give you a massage covering you in Mdma’ (wow, sir, that would be an expensive massage). He also adds he has a flat round the corner in Soho. Well now am really tempted. Not. No, I like him a lot, he’s a great guy, top barman and soon to be top majordomo to an 80’s star who is permanently living in Ibiza. Butno. I like teeth and a lean physique and fresh breath. These are some of those non negotiables. For a moment I wonder how I could obtain the mdma and jus go off... But it’s kind of pointless if I’m on it and the BF (who is out watching Mick Jones’ ‘new’ band with guest appearances by 2 Sex Pistols and an audience of 50 somethings) is not...

So, it remains no. Plus am busy discussing the ‘hen’ w/end that my friend L may take us to prior to her nuptials in May. A riad in Marrakesh. Now that’s stylish. And gay M. Is allowed to come and he’s so lovely to be with. L. Wants to wear a Jessica Rabbit style wedding dress. Which is pretty good given her curvy shape and if she loses some serious weight that has crept up in the last year or so. But what shall I wear? Now I have a project. How nice. I make it back by 2am. It was kind of hard to leave the comfortable banquette and return but it could have gone on till the morning and I simply can’t last that long.

12 March - Sizes & Bigger Sizes

New woman joins us temporarily at work. So we have a Philadelphia (cheese) moment talking about her impending wedding in August. And looking at the engagement ring. Bit small and insignificant if you ask me but she says she wanted something unflashy. Oh dear, I must be up there with Puff Daddy on the subject of bling. Never mind. Only earlier another colleague asked me a propos one who was standing next to her ‘How much weight do you think D could lose?’
The look of horror on my face as having to be put on the spot like this meant she elaborates ‘D says she wants to lose 20kg, it’s too much surely, how much is that in pounds anyway?’ Whilst I register all this and think that 15kg she could easily shed from her tall frame, I say, as ever, and this is a good trick, that I prefer to talk sizes, so I say ‘Er D, what size are you? A 12? (I always make it one size smaller than they are anyway, which is also a good solution to not getting them to hate you forever). There is a brief smile and D says ‘No, a 14 creeping up to 16’.
So, kindly, as if speaking to a patient I say ‘But you were not always a 14 right, what were you last year?’ - didn’t know her then but it’s also always a good ploy. She answers she’d gone down to a 10 for her wedding last Sept. ‘There you go,’ I soothe, ‘that’s 2 sizes to go, but you could aim for one less, just set a goal of size 12, that’s not too difficult to achieve, you eat well and you exercise, so I can only assume it’s the booze? Do you drink with every meal…?
She says not much (dead giveaway that she does), but that when she does, when she’s out, she really goes for it. Yes, can vouch for that, the few times we've been out together after work. Yes, damage done, I think smugly as I definitely don’t do that and feel sick just looking at women downing pints of beer or wine. Nobody ever seems to correlate the contents to a bag of sugar. Thankfully someone else who wants something ‘now’ comes to interrupt this potentially ruinous exchange and when he’s gone, we don’t resume the conversation. Phew!
As the resident size 8 (one of 3 similarly built vs. 5 x size 14 to 16 and an 18 around me, I feel the pressure. If I had a fiver for each time someone says ‘but you’re so skinny!’ or a fiver for each time I refrain from saying ‘Yes, believe me it’s hard not to eat pains of chocolat each day, followed by a bap sandwich and crisps and cola, but you know the two are correlated to getting to your size! Oh and by the way, if you never exercise, forget it’ I’d be rich. Thing is, even the v. happy, v. sorted, v. regular shagged by boyfriend size 18, brings out her old photo from 2 years ago when she was a stone lighter and begs me to look at how she was… I mumble something about ‘You’re just not happy here, go on holiday, change job, it will all fall off you’.
I don’t know… me, something I don’t like, I try to change it. Can’t be that difficult? Or rather, I know that it is folks, but allow me to occasionally rant as it's frikkin' hard work staying PC around so many people with weight issues. And if this pisses you off, let me make it even worse by saying 'Don't go into Topshop and moan you can't find anything if you're a size 14, stick to other shops, they do exist'. I was called 'large' once in a shop in Tokyo and couldn't find a skirt that fitted in Thailand so I realise the frustration, but it's not their fault.

25 February - Storms & Vodkas

We’re going for dinner with a writer in a few days… Toph confesses he’s never read him on account of being friends with the writer’s partner and not him directly. I think it’s rude to have drinks with people who slave away to write and not having had the courtesy to skim a few of their lines. Although Toph could argue that were we friends with a rat catcher we wouldn’t ask to go spend a day watching him catch rats or indeed google stuff to find out how exactly it is that he does it. Same if we were friends with a hairdresser, we wouldn’t necessarily want to go to their establishment to have our haircuts etc.
I know, but writers, musicians, painters… it’s not a skill it’s a talent, you have to pay homage to it. So it is that I go and visit some second-hand bookshops in order to acquire said writer’s books. Surprisingly, and happily for him, he doesn’t seem to be discarded easily and I find none.
So I went on Amazon. This is simply because he writes thrillers, political and/or simply involving old fashioned murderers of women using peculiar methods of despatching them. These kind of novels are not my style; I read one a couple of years ago because I had to, something called Blood Simple, apparently a best seller, the plot based around a stag night prank gone wrong and treacherous girlfriends and treacherous but not as smart as the girlfriend, business partners. Although I couldn’t guess the outcome, neither was I very interested in finding out and it did not keep me awake at night finishing it… it took a while in fact and I happily abandoned it on a train as soon as I skipped to the last chapter. So… understandably I’m reluctant to pay top price for something I know I won’t like, willing as I am to try anything, you don’t get to this age still unsure of how you want to spend your time. The 2 novels I order on Amazon arrive. Can’t believe there are businesses out there that bother to post me a book on which their profit must be all of 90p but thank you. I start reading them in tandem to maximise this sort of waste of my time as there are some other novels by the bed and by the sofa and by the kitchen table and by the desk which are calling me with ‘You bought us and you’re too busy gallivanting around town to make time to read us. Shame on you!’
I merely discover that the latest one is an improvement on the previous one. There is a more interesting setting than the UK, there are more symbols, more metaphors and more of those ‘his blah blah was like a blah blah something else’ which doesn’t necessarily recreate any great image in your head but adds to the word count and I have 3 or 400 more pages to go. Ok, am being ungenerous here, I do know how much effort a novel involves, and the plotting has to be plotted very accurately especially if you’re talking about the fall of the Soviet Union etc etc and I do admire anyone who finishes writing a novel and getting it published. I do.
I’m 130 pages in on both and the dinner is in 8 days. I should manage. But if you haven’t got anything nice to say about something then the old adage stands ie best not to say anything. I am feeling weird getting the books out on the commute into work. I fear someone I know may see me and I won’t be able to explain why I’m skimming them. Then again I’d probably draw some appreciative glance from men, this form of literature being their territory. The writer in question won’t care about my opinion anyway as he sells them by the cartload, has had a TV drama made from an early one and is getting married in luxury in Tuscany in the Summer. Will I cause us to be dis-invited if I make the wrong comment or no comment at all? Then again we were invited without first ascertaining our thoughts on the subject of his novels. But what are we going to talk about at dinner? Or is the fact we’ve chosen a fashionable restaurant the ruse to get us distracted with a bit of star spotting? Then again I don’t know if our writer is so known that some heads will turn when he takes his seat at the table. Will I resist mentioning this not so humble blog? Will Toph find more of interest in thosse novels than I do? Can I get him away from his current fave? The Robert Fisk tome, itself a whopper, a brick, a War and Peace type tome? And did I mention some soul in the Amazon reviews said she re-read one twice and the other one three times? Why? What hidden meanings had she missed and was trying to find. Why not give some new novel a chance instead?