7 June - DVDs & Near disasters

I don't know much but I probably know a little bit more than some clean living girlfriends, so am going to write this post to offer useful information becuse when I told this anecdote to another 2 friends, they both said er.. they didn't know how to take 'it' either.

That's strange, to read the papers the whole country is on cocaine. Gosh, this must make me some kind of dark horse in their eyes but am not .. god I remember that time I was asked to receive a huge amount in a hotel in Denmark where I had arrived with an artist who had graduated to industrial quantities. It sort of burnt in my pocket. He asked if I wanted some and I said no, I had to work. What an idiot! The next day they couldn’t have taken it anywhere with them, it was a straight fly in/fly out gig, so you can imagine the party… whilst conscientious flunkey here was asleep at
2am. Idiot, I'll say it again. Do the drugs, have fun, get sensible later.


So, last week a clean living g/friend, L. says she's been increasingly wanting to be bad, she's over 40 and there's only so much cleansing and detox diets one can be on. And that she wanted to have a wild night at home with the (equally clean living boyfriend) and did I have any porn dvds to lend her and could I get hold of some cocaine. I think my jaw had hit the floor by this point. I said yes to the first request and no to the second one. Or rather, of course I know how to get hold of some but I wouldn't. She said fine she'd ask Billy.

So Friday comes and I go over with the vids (hilarious in itself as they're not mien and had not seen them, in fact, took them without persmission from a friend's small stash, relatively secure in the knowledge he wouldn't miss them).

L. is waiting and tells me when she asked Billy if she could buy a few lines, he laughed and said no, she had to buy a gram. Which is where I came in as turns out L. diddn't know how one takes it. Jeesus! Where has she been for the past twenty years. So she gives me the packet and I get a card and start mashing into powder as it was bit lumpy. She wanted to know about quantities so I should her a conservative line and a fat one. She said she'd only take half of a conservative one. I said you may as well not bother and just drink coffee. She didn't want the boyfriend to know and could she just put it in his drink? Jeesus. No, you can't, and it tastes really bitter so you can't expect him not to taste it. You takes it a note like this and you snort it like you've seen in the movies. Oh no she says, I don't want to do that, I'll just lick it. Suit yourself I said but that's not really the best way. What if I take it she says and kiss him? I said no, he'll taste it in your mouth, you just have to come clean (ha ha!) that you have class A. She's not convinced. I tell her alternatively they can play a game and she can put it on her bits and he can lick it off and so on and so forth. I feel like I'm some kind of porn video director myself or that I'm corrupting my friend but I figure she's old enough to handle it.

The weekend comes and goes and she meets me to return the dvds'. Soooooo??????? You should have seen her smile. Wide as her face. She said that the dvd called Fever was pretty good, the other one less so. Sooooooooooo? I ask her again and she said they had a fab night. Clean living boyfriend didn't question any part of it and went along happily and putting it here worked a treat. It kept her in a state of arousal for ages before coming. What about him? Ah, she says, he was so excited he didn't last long. How come? Impossible, on the stuff you stay hard for ages, in fact annoyingly so. Turns out they did so little that they will try that next time and they'll probably have 6 weekends'worth.

Am having lots of vicarious fun at this point (can't believe she did go into a bit more description, glad to hear her take on fantasy, basically she was the real girl and the ones on the dvd were somewhere over there on the other sofa).

It's only when I get home that something makes me check the dvd's before I put them back. Fever is not in its sleeve. She's given me back her Pilates exercise video. Thank god I noticed, would have been hard (ha ha! again) to explain at a later date.

. Gosh, this must make me some kind of dark horse in their eyes but am not .. god I remember that time I was asked to receive a huge amount in a hotel in DK where I had arrived with an artist. It sort of burnt in my pocket. He asked if I wanted some and I said no, I had to work. What an idiot. The next day they couldn’t take it anywhere with so you can imagine the party…

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.

14 June - Nabucco & Smoke

I'll tell you later... tbc

3 April - Posh Houses & Rich parent envy

Are fairytales always too good to be true? They don’t come along too often and so you know, you get your hopes up. My recent one was moving into a stupendous (compared to Taylor’s current lodgings which are not bad but not in one of her preferred areas such as Mayfair for example) house near Portobello Rd, so close to the garage a friend rents for his car next to the Paul Smith shop on the corner with ken park rd. Yep, I’d be next to J’s garage and the Paul Smith shop. Have I already said what joy that would provide me with? I could go into said shop everyday and slip on a nice jacket for a few minutes, whilst sitting in a stripey chair liveried in his trademark fabrics and I could gaze out at the Agent Provocateur shop opposite and make friends with the girls there, heck, I could even get a Saturday job modelling bras there. This was all going to come about not because I’ve received a massive bonus equal to 20 times my current salary but because superwoman SR was moving out of her house nearby and renting for a while and had a spare room and putting a brand new Powerplate in the next one. What more did I need to say yes, I’ll abandon my current home and cart the shoes and jewellery across, ‘ s all I need to start a new life? Oh, and joy, Toph is nearby, we could meet on corners and kiss before deciding your bed or mine?

All fallen through because the house needed some repairs to ceilings and bathrooms (not to the standard required by my American friend) and the owners couldn’t to these in time for her moving in date (she'd sold her house nearby for cash in one afternoon) or in fact wished to carry them out really. So, given the dearth of available properties (or as someone else just said ‘There isn’t much out there in the £4m mark’, SR had to quickly take a smaller flat, instead of a house and therefore there was only room for the Powerplate and not for me. So I asked ‘Who is this woman in LA (the owner) who can afford to keep an empty house on Ken Park Rd?’
I was expecting to be told the name of some actress but it’s actually Justine, better known for being the g/friend many years ago of D from Blur. I seem to remember she lived there because her well known architect father sort of gave it to her. So there you go…rich parents are always the solution.

So you know, I don’t begrudge rich parents, but perhaps it’s not entirely down to own efforts that Richard Branson’s daughter (a 30 year old doctor) is now the proud owner of a mansion in Holland Park costing £5m and which comes with no mortgage attached. Splendid news from daddy or did she really invest so judiciously her quota of stocks and shares received at birth? Is it less envy inducing when it comes from the parentals or when you marry into it? Perhaps I can ask Holly if she’s got a spare room to rent out to me.

Anyway I tell the BF who says JF is a friend of his friend A. I also remember that E. spent a lovely holiday in Thailand many, many years ago with her and Damon as he’d met them on the beach, as you do. So there you go, if I’d gone and lived in her former house, that would have been a third link between people who don’t know they know each other’s friends and thus me. Am all the more upset now because I could have removed some floorboards and surely found some lost wrappers to auction on ebay (yes, I don’t do ebay but some of my friends do). I can see the headline 'Vintage ex-popstar’s blow'. Gotta be worth something.


Some silly form of decorum prevents me from going to squat the apartment, which is silly really, Joe Strummer did it... probably to his own family...Empty houses need people in them.

26 March - The Actor & The phone & someone called Neil

We can’t avoid the celebrity trail on this blog. It’s not my fault but… the other day DD. Found a lost mobile phone on the street. She took it into work and as it was not a Nokia like hers it took her a while to crack how to read the contacts. She’s 46 and my techie guru for all things downloading but sadly we’re foxed by things that would take a 9 year old 5 mins to do (in fact, to digress, a friend’s 9 year old recently played with my phone whilst I was at dinner with her mum and jazzed it up, sent me photos, changed settings and so on. Staggering knowledge I thought till I asked her what the capital of France was and she wasn’t sure). As DD. was scrolling down the list of names to get to D for Dad and call, she found under C a Chiwetel Ejiofor …. None other than the gorgeous actor who played Trigorin opposite Kristin Scott Thomas in The Seagull which I saw a mere month ago. So she called him instead of Dad. Chiwetel answered with his incredibly sexy actor’s voice and suggested he’d go and pick up the phone in Chelsea where she was and then deliver to his friend. Cue: DD in make up and heels going to reception to find handsomest, tall man leafing through one of the downmarket magazines her employer publishes. And we mean ‘My mother run off with my alcoholic dwarf husband and now they have children whilst mine have been taken into care but am still hoping to have my double DD implants and thus become a top model like Jordan and move away from crap council estate in burbs’ kind of mag. Though let’s not scoff. Someone tried to do that recently but then he asked ‘What’s the circulation?’ Upon being told that it’s a few thousands short of 500k he almost spat out his V&T, whilst DD. smiled sweetly.
Sadly, Chiwetel didn’t ask her our for dinner but the loser of the phone subsequently sent her a huge bunch of flowers. They are a good lot these actors. However, DD. clearly needs some advice to improve ligging skills. She could have asked for tickets for some performance or actually scrolled down the entire address book, who knows who might have been there? But she didn’t, the silly girl.

As my 3 or 4 or 5 degrees must be kept up, Chiwetel first came to attention on stage in Joe Penhall’s play Blue/Orange in 2000. Now, I think a brief lover of mine was in this play, I think I saw it for that reason but can’t remember at all. Maybe he was in something else? Neil. Neil.. what was his surname? We met when you were a bartender at Freds in the legendary late 80’s and I went to see you in your end of year production of either a Chekhov or an Ibsen up in Swiss Cottage. And I’ve seen you on TV a few times since and the last time we spoke you had taken to sending me kinky messages late at night but when I challenged you to just come on over, you mentioned you were downstairs in your study whilst wife was upstairs sleeping so I sort of put the phone down on you and that was the end of that one…(the wife was a surprise).

His surname will probably come to me in the next few days, the wheels are that slow these days, but in the meantime it’s triggered memories of running into some London people one NYE in Venezuela in Isla Margarita to be precise. The link being this would have been same time I knew Neil. So, am there with my sister and a new group of friends and suddenly next to me is John (know him as kid brother of girlfriend) and his sidekick Matthew. At the time one was a lawyer, the other one in TV production. We then hung out together and it was fun, including the boys using me and innocent kid sister as stooges in a bar where they were hoping to buy some cocaine. John’s refrain was ‘I can’t believe we can’t get any in this country’. Clearly he had made a mistake in not booking a holiday in Bolivia instead. Come to think of it, at the time he had a South American girlfriend but she was not from Venezuela or she’d have been there and procured the hoodlums and their wares. Mystery. So. Never mind that in Venezuela they had something akin to the death penalty for drug offences, he was intent on buying cocaine as in London he was totally addicted and the rest, this was a man on 20 E’s a night. I remember the both of them going into the toilet to taste/check the purchase whilst me and sis sipped our drinks waiting for the police to burst through. Having already been on holiday in Jamaica I was well acquainted with the strategy of setting up tourists to buy something for which they could be arrested, pay blackmail money whilst the same amount of drugs went back to get the next stupid tourist and no, it didn’t happen to me. Luckily as gangster’s molls nothing happened to me and sis, though wouldn’t have shagged either on account of a) ugly, especially M who had none of J’ s charm and b) younger than me by 5/6 years. You know, when you’re 29 you can’t do that with a 24 year old. So, a few days later the amount purchased had been consumed, and John was going stir crazy and writing with a stick in the sand in giant letters, ‘I want cocaine’ (hoping a passing small plane may see it and drop him a red cross parcel) with me busy following him around and erasing such heresy from the pristine beach.

Thing is... when they tell you drugs are bad for you, it’s not necessarily true. Jonh had a great time on them and has never not had a fantastic high powered job and he’s still healthy and proud father of small daughter, whilst M is now some movie producer. Ok, it’s the UK so you’ve not seen these movies but there’s one in production that may just be the one to sort him out. On a more spooky small world connection, his wife or g/friend is best friend of my beloved’s ex. Just as well have not kept in touch with that particular mob or a Sunday lunch could be awkward. So, Neil, still can’t think of the surname whilst J and M’s came to mind instantly. Funny how the brain works.