MAD DOGS IN SUMMER

(a summery summary)

I actually used this phrase when talking to a dog-shackled stranger in scorching church grounds today... In fact, this was the ONLY thing I said.

Purple Riot

THERE ARE NO KNIVES FOR CUTTING YOUR THROAT. I MAKE

MOCCASINS ALL MORNING.

Aging, faded, scuffed, delicate, purple and cream covers of slim Anne Sextons.

I took out two lovely narrow volumes of her poetry from the library. Because I could. Because I was free to do so. And they have irresistible covers.

And contain irresistible poetry...

The parasol girls slept, sun-sitting/their lovely years.

Once you read Lohengrin and every goose/hung high while you practiced castle life/in Hanover.

...the brown mole/under your left eye, inherited/from my right cheek...

My favourite is 'I Remember'. One long sentence of summer perfection. I won't include line breaks.

By the first of August the invisible beetles began to snore and the grass was as tough as hemp and was no color - no more than the sand was a color and we had worn our bare feet bare since the twentieth of June and there were times we forgot to wind up your alarm clock and some nights we took our gin warm and neat from... old jelly glasses while the sun blew out of sight like a red picture hat and one day I tied my hair back with a ribbon and you said that I looked almost like a puritan lady and what I remember is that the door to your room was the door to mine.

One of the collections has $3.95 stamped on the top corner. $3.95 for a bunch of poesy... that will never wilt.

She also kept a scrapbook. ADMIRATION and ENVY. She started it when she eloped. It began with a photograph of her and her betrothed, Kayo, sitting in beach chairs. She labelled this 'us' and taped in the key to their Virginia Beach hotel room... "the young bride pastes in laundry lists, gin rummy tallies, her husband's apology note after their first fight. She also starts to write poetry: romantic rhyming couplets and letters, ripped from a magazine, that spell "Bleat, Bleat."

She begins the collections I borrowed with letters from Schopenhauer to Goethe, or Franz Kafka to Oskar Pollack, or a harrowing extract from 'Macbeth' [All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What! all my pretty chickens and the dams in one fell swoop?... I cannot but remember such things were, that were most precious to me.] Or dedicates them to Kayo.

But she writes to the reader. And to herself. Therapy. It did not save her, but it reads beautifully.

So long and thanks for all the Antony and Cleopatra, Nightmare Abbey, beat poets and nonsense words.

HELLO dancing, and quilt races down the stairs, and big fat novels and slim poetry volumes, and whole days spent at the Islington cafe with purple sofas and banquet tables and candles lit at 5.30 and a scorched ceiling from flames and warm chocolate cake and colourful nudes on the wall, just reading, reading, reading...

HELLO Star Wars sleepover, and Rome day, and guilt-free Guardian perusal, and picnics, and hammocks, and actual cooking as opposed to pouring cereal, and Tina We Salute You, and exploring Dalston and Brixton and London, London, London...

HELLO Hop Farm, and ale, and Davendra, and Laura, and Steve.

HELLO miles and miles of smiles.

Makebelieve

Olive: Okay, pretend we're fairies. I'm a girl fairy and my name is ... La-ru...lee. And you're a boy fairy and your name is Teeteree.

Caden: Ok.

Olive: What's my name again?

Caden: La-ru-lee.

Olive: No. I said ... La-ru-la...ay.

Olive: Pretend we fight each other. And I say stop hitting me or I'll die. And you say okay, but you're fibbing. And you hit me again.

Caden: Okay.

Olive: Okay. Let's go. Hit me.

They pretend to hit each other. Olive makes hissing and roaring noises. She stops.

Olive: Okay. You have to stop hitting me now or I will die.

Caden: Okay.

He stops.

Olive: No! Pretend you're fibbing! Remember?

He mock hits her again. She falls.

Olive: Now I have to die. (BEAT) Pretend you say you don't want me to die.

Caden: I don't want you to die.

Olive: (compassionate whisper) But I have to.

Caden: But I'll miss you.

Olive: I have to. And you'll have to wait a million years to see me again. And I'll be put in a box. And all I'll need is a tiny glass of water. And lots of -- tiny pieces of pizza. And the box will have wings, like an airplane.

Caden: Where will it take you?

Olive: Home.

Chocolate Raisin Revision

'We reap the benefit of a more poetic point of view. A line like the charming "At Godstow, they gathered hazel on the grave of Rosamond" could be written only by a writer who was at a certain distance from his people, so that there need be no explanations.'

A charming line indeed. No explanation needed for such loveliness as gathering hazel, graves, and the romance of a dead girl named Rosamond. Thank you, as ever, for your insight Virginia.

Charm is necessary, as I have taken to crying into pages in public. At the sad things. Like babies still trying to suckle from their dead mother's breast in 'A Journal of the Plague Year'. And Mary Shelley writing in her diary 'Found my baby dead. A miserable day' as a single entry. And the love letters of Keats to Fanny. Which I should know better not to read in public by now.

And I had to shout NO to Shelley's elegy for Keats being read aloud to me. A mere word, the mere thought... The Saddest Thing [Shelley's Elegy Shelley's Elegy Shelley's Elegy Tongue Twisting Tonguetwister. Also, if said over and over SEMANTIC SATIATION]

I would rather think of Byron and his petulant distaste for Keats' 'mental masturbation', and picture myself hanging out with darling John as he wrote poetry for me and ate nectarines and I would just stare at him all day long.

And as revision is leading us down this road, strewn with flowers as it is and was for Coleridge, we should spend a little time of each day acting like Christ and Socrates. Though Socrates is more fun. Talk a great deal, receive affirmations from your very own Glaucon, drink MUCH wine, and bugger young boys. Though Madiera is the thing, now that I'm all about the Romantics. Wine to sack to Madeira.

And I know nothing of Yeats, aside from the fact that he lived in a TOWER. Which is all there is to know really. I should like to live in a tower. Or at least have an enchanted garden where we can choose orchids for our buttonholes.

And I can sing Cratylic to Blondie's 'Atomic'.

A Hazlitt and Lamb comedy sketch, not by Boz.

Londonlondonlondon. Lived here for three years. Three hour exam on London in the morning.

And all that is in my mind is my urchin Oliver, my little Pip, my saintly Esther singing the opening page of Bleak House.

London. Michaelmas term lately oooo-ver...

He has it memorised and set to a choral score. Urban beauty itself. His voice soars on the polluted city winds, angelically cutting through the fog like a swan cuts through the Thames sewage.

Three years of London, and twenty-one years of literature, condensed down to three hours of essaying. I shall end up writing such COCKney. Metropolitan poppycock.

Having a coke with you is more fun

we are drifting back and forth between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

I heart O'Hara

Such Sweethearts

I want to be shot into this video like an arrow from a bow. The target being the awesome party where The Archie Bronson Outfit are rocking 'Dart for my Sweetheart'.

It has everything a lovely perfect party should have. With extra BEARDS.

Black and white makes pretty much anything look cool. But the fact there are brightly coloured felt tip animations puncturing the grainy monochrome makes it SUPERcool. Seven shiny reasons are successfully depicted (which is no mean feat) and with medieval figures! At one point they float through psychedelic colours and out into SPACE. 'Take you how only I can'. And I always love Roman numerals - boring maths elevated to classy Classicism.

The whole thing looks ultra modern, yet also like seventies New York. It becomes colour once the heaving, seething party gets started, but looks like a home video, like faded polaroids. All just jamming in a room, chanting, chanting... DEEP voice/girlish infectious yelps. Closed eyes/WIDE eyes. The best bit is when there are colour shots of girls wound up in fairylights, then it goes dark, the fairylights twinkle in this darkness, then it goes back to black and white. Cool.

And there's a glimpse of a girl holding a goose. As I said, everything a lovely perfect party should have. I want to combine archery and Archie... SHOOT ME INTO THE SCREEN. Into the awesome scene. Let me join the sweethearts please.

The run up to the ‘xams (ZAMS! – like supercool sci-fi lasers in a comic strip) has, for better or worse, come to equal ---->

Burns upon papercuts, being (un)cool enough to refuse proffered cigarettes, acting all childish NOT child-like, mocking the myopic, chilli-red window glows heating conversation, meat-free meatball feasts, monitoring vegetable patch construction, imagining Bounty women on beaches (wearing scarlet lipstick if the Bounty is dark chocolate), floral long culottes and Indian-print harem onesies, dwelling on outfits for professors of poetry in motion, passing a Dr Who mini-tardis and becoming part of an episode as an enormous rusted box is pulled from the Thames – space ship? gigantic Doomsday book? bigger brother of the Discworld Luggage?, ice lollies, Birthday stamping, profanity stickers, horizontal popcorn and poppotatoes, biro-scrawl tattoos on the backs of hands, bawling loudly, weeping silently, hearing woodpigeons everywhere, sherbet dib-dabs, writing BAD poetry… And hating bibliographies.

But also loving Antony and Cleopatra, The Sorrows of Young Werter, The Tempest, re-visiting a favourite novel and the actual process of READING. Opening the covers of a book need not be akin to opening Pandora’s box. I HOPE.

Curiouser and Curiouser

'Come, there's no use in crying like that!' said Alice to herself, rather sharply; 'I advise you to leave off this minute!' She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. 'But it's no use now,' thought poor Alice, 'to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!'

I address myself, just as Alice does, still in the habit of thinking there are two of me. But I keep on taking bites from the Eat Me cake, making myself bigger and bigger, more solid and visible.

And vaguely respectable. Sort of.

But it's hard to be respectable, and not to fly away in a clumsy whirlwind, and have a good grasp of proprioception (this, put simply, is the brain’s knowledge of the relative positions of the body’s parts - the seventh sense), when body parts grow, retract, lengthen and shorten according to how much mushroom is nibbled.

Yet I think I would remember where I keep my body parts, irrespective of reliable proprioception. I trust them not to wander. But maybe this is my mistake...

They crash into things whether I know their whereabouts or not. Maybe they should rearrange themselves into something infinitely more elegant and graceful. Quicksmart. This is the only way to make me even half a respectable person. Though I would have to sacrifice some beautiful bruises.

How my heart leaps! But hearts, after leaps, ache.
I can’t help feeling Romeo and Juliet, frustrating as that is, but perhaps because of Prokofiev and the effect of necrophiliac ballet, making my heart leap then ache.

I am always complaining or talking about the weather. My penny’s worth that is worth nothing. Penny chews now cost more than a penny, so I struggle to chew the fat.

Butternut squash, sea monkeys, spectacles, enseamed beds of rank sweat.
Record sleeves, sleeve fights, sleeves that cover my hands.
I throw wine, I throw coffee, I allow my nail varnish to chip, I slice up my hands with paper ever since the blood blister popped.

And I brush my teeth. I am always brushing my teeth. It's more fun to brush teeth with someone else. After we sugared our apples. And failed to stew our tea in the proper way. I like tannins.

And there is a new Barbara Trapido book coming out. And it has a ballet dancer. And it will be read after exams. In the sun. In floral dungarees.

And the smell of barbecue is still on jumpers and sheets. I hope I can bottle the scent and keep it.

How'd you like them apples?

At the moment my head is like a one of those fruit machines you put change into at the arcades, with my eyes being replaced with vertically spinning pictures of fruit.

I'm tracing fruit through the ages...
Eve and the apple.
St Augustine and the pear.
Keats and the nectarine.
T.S. Eliot and the peach.

And now, most prevalently, Jeanette and her oranges, and Rita and her rubyfruit.

'Fruit salad, fruit pie, fruit for fools, fruited punch, Demon fruit, passion fruit, rotten fruit, fruit on Sunday. Oranges are the only fruit.'

Jeanette, I beg to differ. Oranges are plentiful, granted, but they are not the only fruit. Especially in literature. Especially in lesbian literature. And it's turning me into a fruitcake. (Similar to a nutcase, but nuts are not fruit, and therefore not allowed.)

There are also cherries on icecream that are like Greta Garbo kisses. And banana splits, topped with fat cherries bordering on the obscene (that comes crashing down on a misogynist's head). And two raspberries that are ordered alongside a fond female friendship. And Melanies who look like melons. And dried and pickled fruits librerally sprinkled over breakfasts and novels as women age...

And the grapefruit freak. A man who likes strangers to throw grapefruit at his naked body. It has to be a different person every time. He gets off on it (every citrus squelch is described). Fruity.

And of course the famed Rubyfruit. What juicy gossip.

All this fruit has been driving me mad in the attic. Fruit as a feminine and feminist symbol. Gilbert and Gubar would approve.

I think the madness started as soon as I came home, where there are SO MANY grapes on offer. No wonder grapes are associated with ill people. Eating them is like popping pills. Addictive.

People can get lost when diving into fruitbowls, sliding down the spirals of orange peel. Let's hope this fruitcake phase proves fruitful.

Bard allaying boredom

While I wait for Devon Sproule's Keep your Silver Shined to sound sublime, which it only does when accompanying SUN, barbeques, ice cream and bare legs that stick to chairs, I keep myself occupied with slices and slivers of things that are charming.

Such as dancing on the top floor with a barefoot friend, followed by an impromptu waltz that sweeps the crowd. Three-way waltzing is a treat, if one spins to the right beat.

Another thing that makes everything a little brighter is believing that the second Star Wars trilogy was never made. Then re-imagining them written and directed by Michel Gondry or David Lean, rather than the disillusioned George Lucas.

Perfect escapism also comes in the form of Franco Zeffirelli films. I want to live in a Zeffirelli world. It seems to be perpetual twilight, and looks ever so pre-Raphaelite. His 1968 Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is all free love, flowing hair and fluttering eyelashes. And Juliet almost looks as young as Shakespeare intended her to be, which is rare, and therefore the tragedy and adolescent emotion is heightened. I only just realised that Miranda in The Tempest is also pretty young - only fifteen. But Miranda is pathetic, a rubbish Shakespearean heroine. If one can even call her a heroine. Granted, her father is a bastard with super powers who won't let her kiss with tongues, but Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Rosalind and Beatrice wouldn't have taken any of that crap. And Ophelia always remains a favourite - I don't get Hamlet, but Ophelia fascinates me. Tousled, sing-song, airy-fairy floaty with flowers, ending in a tragic watery farewell. Millais did her proud. Though I don't imagine her in shades of green, rather a faded red or dusky kind of pinkish.

The light may soon be changing to that of a Zeffirelli film set. And Devon will sound as she should. And dancing barefoot will become second nature.

A hot air balloon of youthful enthusiasm

Sneezes are small explosions that are disrupting my learning. My final learning. Less than a week of learning left...Then I will have learned all the things. Though perhaps not all the Things. That comes later. After university.

Some of my final learning was about butterfly personalities. Being stimulated in all sorts of ways. Indeed.
And about Fourier's manias. Apparently manias are excellent and important. His was for lesbians. He also thought that brackish sea water should be turned into lemonade, into something drinkable. This is a good idea.
And about Sadian logic constructed by Barthes, and that 'obviously' the Marquis de Sade and Fourier are connected. Obviously. Duh. I don't know why these names were said over and over and over, at the same time as books and 'isms' were being thrown about willy nilly. This I still need to learn.
Sodom also seemed to come into things. Maybe I need to learn about Sodom.

Other learning has consisted of watching the first series of Queer as Folk in one happy Sunday, then chatting about it with academics at an ungodly hour. And also discussing the lyrics of So Long Marianne and Suzanne. And also looking up youtube videos with Kiwi tutors of his ukelele-playing colleague in The Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

I don't understand all the learning. But that's fine. The things that matter stick. Like butterflies, lemonade and Leonard Cohen...

A Victorian Romantic

I have discovered another heroine. I shall add her to my collection. The collection of heroines I keep in a box. It's a bit like those music boxes with the tiny rotating ballerinas twirling on a mini pedestal, but each time I open it there is a different one of my heroines doing whatever they do best to the lyrical tones of 'I wisssshh I could be yooooouu'.

In this particular case, the heroine will be taking photographs as she twirls to the camera flash.

Julia Margaret Cameron was an ugly duckling. Her mother was an aristocratic French belle, and her sisters were nick-named things like 'Beauty' and 'Dash'. She was dubbed 'Talent'. Cutting. But she lived up to this label with flair.

Born in Calcutta and educated in France, she chose to live on the Isle of Wight from 1860 onwards. Then, aged 48, she was given a camera.

Her photographs are like Pre-Raphaelite paintings, all soft focus and fairy tales. She created a series of Arthurian scenes, with many costumes and limp poses and far-away looks. Religion and literature were her inspiration, and her models dressed up and posed in her chicken shed. Feathered angel wings amongst the poultry. She used ordinary people as her models, 'arresting' them in order to make them pose for her creations. Her Arthur was a strapping young chap who made deliveries on the Isle, and during the Idylls of the King photographic process the locals became impatient due to him being kept in his Arthur guise for hours on end.

The photographs are beautiful. They are over the top, romantic, of another era, yet she believed in them as ART. Rightfully so.

Tennyson was a neighbour of hers. They chatted over cups of sugar (I hope). She created photographic portraits of him, Darwin, Browning, Millais, Burne-Jones, William Rossetti, Ellen Terry - all greats of the age, all of romantic sensibilities. And all magically made immortal and ethereal by her intentionally out-of-focus lens.

And, as if she couldn't be esteemed any higher or be any more AWESOME in my eyes, she was the great-aunt of Virginia Woolf.

I would love to escape to her Isle of Wight world. I could do this through reading Woolf's comic slip of a play Freshwater. Or by simply gazing into her photographs.

Thing Theory

The Thingness of Things is an actual Thing. It was used in a King Lear lecture and everything. By a man who knows Such Things. Probably everyThing.

Things like knickers, school uniform and saucepans. All purchased in John Lewis.

And looking glasses, and feathers and buttons. Thou art the thing itself.

For Leonhart

I made a smudged interpretation of a fuchsia,
Muddied onto the page in Ireland,
Where dogs are named for the wrong star,
Orion.

I find my way by fuchsia-bush Satnav,
The crushed petals plotting a map;
Second stigma from Tufnell Park
And straight on till Hampstead.
The map is now well-trodden,
Releasing rotting perfumes
Just as Ronald releases nausea when
The flowers are beneath his foot.

Phew, she said whilst drowning,
No longer playing the heroine
Of an exhausting gothic melodrama.
She had peaked, but now prefers
To float as a mannequinned martyr.
She chassées into futile cha chas
Down the sewaged moat,
Making her red gown wilt.

Wash, dry, rustle taffeta,
And silk shot with scarlet,
Vining, veining, blotting blood
That scabs with fine flesh tissues.
Expose those billowing bloomers,
A shade darker than the tutu,
And dangle tiny ballet slippers,
Quiver, caught in gentle gusts.

Grown beneath my smudged interpretation
Is the greatest compliment I ever had;
A copy of my flower, stuck with
Sellotape.

YOUR FACE

Everything's purple except the red beret. And there's bones in the Quad, and I'm all milkshake and flapjack. And Maud is a rose lily queen gem ghost, never HER. And I want a t-shirt saying 'I shot the Albatross'.

And your face is a stream of consciousness that I don't want to row down.
And your feet look like Tony Benn.

Visitors

They cling to lampshades and live in windows,
And other insects consider them bimbos.
But domestic or wild, bird or bug?
I question these ladies who reply with a shrug,
They pose static upon bottles of wine,
Preferring this perch to Edenic vines.
Even through our drunken fug,
We can spy these shrunken bugs,
Finding them in the flour and mince
And on the butter - little-leg prints.
I learnt that birds are code for the Sapphic
(Lesbian play made less graphic)
Are you this way inclined or not,
Covered in pin-prick anti-acne spots?
'What does it matter?', I hear them cry,
'The most awesome thing's that we can FLY!'
It's true, that's cool, so don't be cruel
To these intruding studding jewels.

I am fond of our lady-like insects, much maligned by others. The prettiest of vermin. I'd paper my walls with your shells - black and bugged and red all over.

Vim and Spunk

I think I went through a Coraline phase. And I don't mean a phase of liking, loving, and being obsessed by Coraline, as that is pretty much a way of life, a mindset, a philosophy that is constant in my very being. I mean a phase of looking like Coraline. Though I was not eleven. More like nineteen or so... Eleven at heart however. As I shall forever be.

Cartoonish features, spaghetti limbs, bobbed hair (though not blue, for shame), an evil glare when enraged...

I may no longer resemble her physically, but I like to flatter myself by thinking that I am still part Coraline. Neil Gaiman writes that she's "full of 'vim' and 'spunk' and all those wonderful old-fashioned words." And she's curious, and scrappy, and sees the world through holes in stones. She likes candyfloss and the mouse circus, and talks to cats and is attracted by green gloves. She wears ace jumpers and shiny blue boots. She travels through acid-trip tunnels and hunts for the trapped souls of ghost-children.

Well, I'd say that's me in a nutshell. It has, after all, been said that I am all wool and fairies. This seems to fit with the Coraline world, which is all threads and fantasy.

And I do love buttons. Though more so on CARDIGANS, rather than sewn into eye sockets.

I Beam

Anybody who knows me knows that I am all about the EYEBEAMS.

The single best thing I have KNOWLEDGE of. They are an ocular obsession of mine. The conception of visual reciprocation achieved by the exchange of eyebeams. This is actual SCIENCE. Renaissance biology in corporeal motion. Fiery darts that pass through the eyes and hit the object of one's desire. Eyebeam emissions that are shot from the soul and pierce the reflecting target. Venus, Adonis, and wide-eyed sparks.

Then someone told me about the science of blinking.

If a person is attracted to another, they blink more often. Hence the fluttering of eyelashes. Looking into someone's eyes, with real connection, with a steady gaze, exposes one's ocular orbs (and, arguably, one's heart...) to the elements. Therefore increased blinking is necessary: to keep eyejuice flowing and to give an alluring glaze. When this someone told me this, I blinked too much, became too aware of eyejuice, and almost succumbed to his over-active flickering eyelids. I held myself back and struggled to resist the science. Damn his eyes!

[Parenthetically, this makes me think of the girl in Indiana Jones, who sits in class and stares at the dreamy Indy-in-Teacher-Guise, slowly blinking, with the words 'LOVE' and 'YOU' written on her eye-lids. A perfect moment in film - disturbing, frivolous, beautiful, true]

But surely blinking science contradicts eyebeam science...

If eyebeams are shot from love-struck eyes, then blinking would hinder and disrupt this process. The science of amorous eyes is a complex one. However, perhaps eyebeams are stronger than the thin tissue of eyelids. They come from within, from the thick-tissued aorta, and are powerful enough to penetrate the eyes and heart of another being. Mere blinks cannot halt or offset their path. They will always hit the target they are aimed toward, as this is determined by the heart and is not subject to direction-distorting blinks. Blinking serves to fan the flames of the fiery darts, making them blaze all the brighter and strike all the hotter.

These two concepts are perfectly combined in a myth of an icon. An icon of the Chelsea Hotel, who inspired a party, lived fast, died young, loved too much. It was her big eyes that were to blame... a speeding Edie Sedgwick was said to have set her room on fire while gluing on her thick false eyelashes by candlelight.

She flamed, framed in mascara.

My Day in Real Time

Nosleep, busrun, workworkwork, errand-bank-errand-stationers-errand-printers-errand-COFFEE, mad-dog-mad, workworkwork, facebook, foldfold–nofoldingmachine-foldfold, make-tea-wash-up, fascinatingviewing: fortyfiveminute list of lords and ladies, guests for the bookshop party, RUTHLESS, struckoff, allergies (to people), oh no, I don’t think so, do you, Tarquin etc, I know a sordid secret…chatstruggle with boss’husband, trip-to-Bangladesh, DRINKSONTHEM, drinkdrinkdrink, tales of heart attacks in Fortnum&Mason, drunken-drugged-up falling sisters, skull removed for months, bloodymindedness/braindamage, literatichitchat, busbusbus, flatmate-attack, old-man-Malcolm, quicknap/threehoursleeeep, bed-pile-in, phone-call-record-the-wine-fed, busbus, happybirthday-insertname, disturbinggoogling, joint, HUNGER, dodgysamosa, packet-of-ice-cream-crackers, funnynoises-helloooomynaameiseeeddd-low-deep-sci-fi-villain, smiles, sleeeeep, countering-nosleep.

Waiting for Rainbows

I was held captive by the Washing Machine Man. Or rather what the Washing Machine Man said. You must be both IN and AWAKE for the next few washes. To make sure it doesn't EXPLODE.

So I stayed in and listened to the whirr of the circulating colours (which will all end up pink. Fact) and the rain outside.

I woke to the rain this morning. And I had dreamt that my usually suited and scarved attic-dwelling friend was wearing a lacquered anorak. Coincidence? I think not.

Also, merely days after leaving the creepy kitten umbrella at an Islington Public House that had both chandeliers and disco balls. That kitten had it coming, wearing its lime green jumper and staring, staring at me with its cat's eyes that followed mine incessantly through all weather, whether it was pouring cats and dogs or not.

This is all a sign I should sail to Cherbourg. In an upturned umbrella, across the Channel. To a technicolour sixties world of pastels and brights, co-ordinated wallpaper, carnival apocalypse, fake snow, helmet hair, 'maybe the happiness is making me sad', and where Catherine Deneuve et al sing everything, including ps and qs, Francois et Francoise and postmen have cameos of Bonjour ou Au Revoir.

And umbrellas reign supreme among practical yet pretty accessories. It's a hard life running an umbrella boutique. Poverty can strike if precipitation does not. So I shall sail to Cherbourg, wear a mini-dress, marry a jewellery salesman with a 'tache, have another man's baby, backcomb my beehived hair, and buy many an umbrella. All in french melody. Jolie. And in harmony with washing machine whirring.

A dash of silly

Back to usual FRIPPERY. Declared with triumphant fanfare arm-movement. 'Frrrrippperryy!'

Because being Romantic and Square is Hip and Aware.

Because...

It should be in a conservatory,
you in a white frock with a red rose in your hand...
and a violin playing in the distance,

and I should be making violent love to you behind a palm tree.

[ Laughing ]
Poor darling. Never mind.

Because that is how Maxim de Winter thinks best to propose.

You know me less constant

On the bus.
A long day. Left before the sun rose, before the commuter train had passed, staring at scrawled numbers and papercuts and Romantic Theatre handouts throughout the daylight hours, then a final recycle run later...I hop...
Onto the bus.
It's dark, I'm dog-tired, dead-eyed, bus-fugged and glazed. Looking forward to a night of spoken-word, songs, basements, booze and bunting...
Sylvia Plath starts to speak.
She's all iPod poems and plumbs, mixing Massachusetts with a housewife drawl.
In the glass in front of my seat I see myself. My outline is clearly defined, the colours are mostly there, all details visible. But a blank where my eyes should be. Well, not a blank, but a smudgy space of grey wool. Some man's jumper beyond the glass. Where my eyes should be.
As Parliament Hill Fields begins, as I head toward Kentish Town, I gaze into the wool. Unspooled? No, woven.
New Year. Loss of a child. Older only child lives still. All seems prevalent, relevant. As I gaze into the wool.
It is New Year. No longer a child... I'm older, and living. Living in capital letters. In bold, printed, not-grown-up-or-joined-up handwriting, so the child is not forgotten.
Indigo nimbus, cellophane balloon. Nonsense words of colours, mists. I want the balloon to pop. The grey to turn to indigo. The wool to be unspooled. So I can see my eyes.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Stories, in my opinion, should mostly include coloured trumpets, sausages in heat, musings on Thursdays, and the fact that Chaucer's father was a vintner.

And they should have a character named the Yam Man, who offers people yams on the bus and advises passengers against selling their pretty necklaces.

And they should be peppered with anecdotes, like knocking small children over in the street with the Norton Anthology of Shakespeare, then placing them back on their feet with one deft movement.

And they should have a fairly lengthy Bible passage wedged in, preferably from the Book of Revelations as this links to Middle English texts and lists jewels.

And they should be based on true stories of criminality, describing fumbling with locks in a wordy way, rife with innuendo.

And they should be accompanied by beer and cushions and obstacle courses of crossed legs and trendy people from Peckham and cellists wearing floral dresses and choirs who bide their time.

And they should be read from a fairy-lit pedestal, megaphoned to all, spreading mega-fun.

This way, bedtime stories can only lead to better dreams...

Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud

We are going to make an album. A Concept Album of Ambiance.

To make this album, we are going to record both sounds and noises. Yes, both Sounds and Noises. It is a radical new movement.

The track list will be as follows:

Rainfall
Crackling Fire
Passing Night Trains
Breath of a Sleeping Person
The Sea
The Motorway
Birdsong (though not woodpigeon)

And the bonus track, approximately fifteen minutes after the last listed recording, will be Caterwauling. Literally a wailing cat. It will shock.

We will travel around the country wearing headphones and carrying all our electrical equipment. We shall be mostly silent as we go about recording these elemental Sounds and Noises. And of course a documentary crew will be following us. The creation of such an album is perfect documentary material. Intrepid artistes on location. The cameras will capture our patience and perseverance as we quietly climb trees to birds' nests, waiting for them to sing. They will watch us as we daringly loiter on the edge of a busy motorway for seven hours, meticulously sorting the Land Rovers from the Lamborghinis. They will film us scorching our fingers and heating our cheeks as we successfully pick up the subtle and fluid flickers of a flaming log fire.

And they will gaze on with morbid fascination as one of us prods a stray cat in the street, whilst the other bravely holds the mic up to its snarling features.

All in the name of Art.

This will be most high-brow and make us Indie STARS. And, on the back of this and as a side project, I shall start up a band called the Carotene Receptors and write songs about organic growth, vegetarianism and lasers.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

So, what are your Plans With a Capital P, and how do they fit into The Grand Scheme of Things???

Watchwords of the moment. Plans. Intentions. Aspirations. Yada yada yada...

When speaking of The Grand Scheme of Things, one must use expansive, expressive arm movements that signify the great scope of the skies and beyond. It's best to look up.

Characters travel all the way from Posterity to help populate the as yet unfounded Future, adding their blueprints to the plans that will make the settlement stable and help with the perpetual conundrum of the roof. Will it fly off? Will it fall, bringing the walls down with it? Architecture in a nutshell. Though a nutshell that can contain all Life. All your Life yet to be built.

Why can I not travel to New Zealand (the land of my forefathers), track down the tribe that honoured my Grandfather with a handmade shroud on his death due to his kindness and sexual prowess, have them make me their princess, be carried around on a thrown until bidding farewell in order to pursue an apprenticeship in clockmaking, learn my trade whilst wearing tiny gold spectacles, then set up shop in New York?

Because this is a Plan for another person.

Mine lies in the hand that comes from the cloud. Hovering above the garden, offering, cradling, elevating the five-beamed star. Five routes I could take as I get lost in London? Don't dwell; it will all be Ace.

All doe-eyed...

Sometimes I feel a bit like Dr Who. I don't own a Tardis (though Ma's temporary car does resemble it a little - unfortunately it is NOT bigger on the inside than the outside, especially when full of tall boys). I don't have an arch nemesis in the form of a Dalek. I don't possess a Sonic Screwdriver (but am asking for one next Christmas). I don't have two hearts. I do, however, frequently wear Converse...
No, I fail in being Dr Who in many ways. Much to my shame. But there are rare occasions when I think we share some powers. In terms of time control. Time can stop for me. I am a Timelord.
I was stomping about in the snowy woods, all alone with my deafening thoughts and my mother's bracken-crushing walking boots, when a moment froze. Across the steep forest flora and fauna, through the framing trees, I spied a deer. It was looking right at me. Eyes connected with mine and time stood still. As time ceased to be, I could not say how long we were locked in this quiet state.
Nothing snapped, nothing burst; the deer merely turned and walked away when moments began to follow one another once more.
And I ran. In a downward direction. Stumbling, tripping, feet disappearing in powdered snow, like a little fearless child. The best kind of running.
A Tardis is not needed with my Time Power. My Time Power and my running feet.

Postcards from the Past

Hexham eccentricities are my favourite flavour of eccentricity. Nostalgia, with a hint of madness, is delicious and the ultimate winter comfort food. I sought warmth away from the icy streets in the fusty, dusty Aladdin's cave of the labyrinthine antique shop today. Warmth was not found (as the variegated clutter unfortunately failed to make the bare brick walls and stone floors toasty) but sociological treats succeeded to wrap me in the heat of secret discovery.

Postcards were on sale for 20p a pop. They were piled up in a box on a shelf, and lurid colours lured me in. Some were stamped and were scrawled over, evidently donated once received by the relatives of travellers. I sifted through the collection, picking out ones that particularly caught my eye. It was only when I was reading them through later, that I realised I had selected three that were addressed to the same person. The Bramwells of The Bungalow. Two of the three were sent by the same sender. Therefore I am granted an insight into a family...

The first is from Amsterdam.



'I'm staying in Amsterdam for the weekend, with Christine, who was at school with Mum. I just suddenly decided yesterday to come, and rang up to ask if it was convenient. Today I've been to the Rifkamuseum with Stephen - it was great. Then we went on to walk around Amsterdam looking at shops, buildings etc. Thank you for the letter, Grandad. I'll write soon. Love Vanessa.'

The next two are written in a more adult, indecipherable script.

This one is from Australia.



'Dear Auntie Evelyn, We are having the usual good time. Visited Cook Town. Had a superb sea-food meal. Oysters, barracuda, prawns, scallops! Mouth watering! Could barely walk away! Then we had an equally superb meal at a German restaurant in Cairns. The flight up to Cook Town was very interesting, flew low over the Great Barrier Reef. Off to Thursday Island & Yorke Island. All love, Barbara xx'

This last one is from India, and dated 4.12.75.



'Dear Auntie Evelyn, Early morning bathers in the Ganges! Saw sunrise over the Ganges, watched the Hindus bathing & taking blessings from priests. (Priests under the umbrellas!) Saw a body being burnt - only saw a foot! & another body waiting in Delhi now. [Squiggles that I can't decipher] city having lots of ice creams! All love, Barbara'

I think I would like to meet this well-travelled Barbara.

Postcards are so much more joyous than texts, so much more heartening than twitter updates. These supposedly outdated means of happy communication may have constraints as to word counts, but pictures can say a thousand words, and handwritten jottings can lift a thousand spirits.

Inflecting Reflections

These drizzle-blurred weeks have passed in a mist of withering at tea parties; freezing at dinners; baking at dances; simmering at routs; and repeating the word Tofurkey in my head. Tofurkey, tofurkey, faux turkey, tofurkey. Rhythms that accompany whipped-up thoughts, as I imagine theremins wail...

(I am) a Lotus (Floating on the River (of Life))

Coffee with Kate is never just coffee
The buzz isn’t caffeine
Nor the sugar rush cake.

It’s band names and tip-offs
And costume and customs
And strutting whilst twirling
The microphone wire.

It’s underground murmurs
And what’s up’n’coming
And why a kimono’s
The best thing to wear.

It’s French words that ‘drift’
And prostitute paintings
And undoing apparent
Foundations of punk.

It’s song-swapping snap
And scribbles on paper
And mille fuille allusions
With eye-linered blink.

It’s Verlain, it’s Sickert,
And suave Jean Genet
And bowing at altar
Of Baroness Elsa.

It’s the merits of brackets
And the pleasure of Trash
And maintaining the buzz
That keeps finger on pulses.

It’s Dada and Dada
And dada and dada
And dada and dada
And dada and da…

Coffee with Kate is never just coffee
It’s more than just coffee
It’s more than just cake
It’s Dada and Dada
And dada and dada
And dada and dada
And dada and DA

Florence Nonsense

Unnervingly, I have discovered that I am Florence from The Magic Roundabout.

Messy crop, a fan of bows, sticky-out skirt, blank expression, terrible posture. Me.

Easily distracted by flowers, wide-eyed with awe in the face of distress, driven by a desire for everybody to be super-duper lovely and happy all the time. Me.

Jerkily graceful as she floats through a stop-motion, psychedelic, technicolour seventies world. Me.

A puppet. Not so much...

Maybe it's not unnerving. Maybe it's actually FABULOUS.

Once Spent, Be Paid a Visit...

I love Ginsburg. He pretty much wrote each of his poems under the influence of a different drug: LSD, peyote, marijuana, yage... He even wrote 'Yage Letters' when (surprise, surprise) indulging in this mind-expanding illegality.
Of course this is in NO WAY connected to the brilliant story of this beat poet being visited by Blake. Following masturbation, Ginsburg experienced a vision: Blake reciting 'The Sunflower' and 'The Sick Rose' over his contented form. What a happy apparition. Blessed by Blake in bliss.
And, when one thought it just couldn't get any better, our Allen was the one who coined the phrase 'flower power'. Awesome. Listen to his drug-addled genius, with a nasal twang and devilish revelry... http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1547

Literally eating Salvador's heart out

The day after doing tequila shots the Swiss way - with cinnamon and segments of orange in place of the eye-watering salt and lemon, for a more warming, Autumnal twist - I indulged in a Surrealist Feast.

A cracker full of anatomical accessories kicked off proceedings, sprinkling the table with 'taches, glasses, noses, toothy gumguards, giant sequins and jokes. A balloon crown was bestowed on the birthday girl, and bunches of bright helium were attached to each wrist. She was given no choice but to weigh herself down with cheesy nachos, fries, filled potato skins, and a whole rack of ribs. This was the counter-attack on balloon elevation. There was no excuse for the rest of us...

Straws slopped out of Marguerita tumblers, 'taches wandered creatively over rosy faces, forming monobrows and mutton chop sideburns, eyes were made large by absurdly round specs (all the better for reading literary lesbian porn, whilst chomping on chips), and spider-leg eyelashes crawled their way over the thick black rims. Diners transformed into Professor Trelawney, Geography teachers, and seventies Glam-Rockers.

'Happy Birthday' was sped up and confusingly altered, so we sang our own tunes whilst the cake was punctured with fireworks before being sprinkled with cocoa-coloured ash. I spooned around the carbon and chemicals... A lone balloon weaved its way through those feasting, held at eye level by a levitating nose. 'I was never very good at chemistry', he said.

A slurp or seven of Oreo milkshake later, and the revellers departed. 'I'm mad, me' was emblazoned across the flushed face of the one wearing a mane of silver strands atop her disco-destined head. A flash-forward to her middle-age, and madcap antics when alone with her cats.

To ease full stomachs, by lightening the load, balloons were launched outside, into the lights of Leicester Square and far, far away. We followed them to the second star on the right, and straight on to mourning the end of a Surrealist Feast.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/video/video.php?v=611432604030&ref=mf

I missed the Megabus, so bought Dior...



I make like John Wayne, and add more AWE.

Handful of Heroes

Right, so this is pretty much the best thing EVER.

Author finger puppets. On index we have Leo Tolstoy, the middle bears Will Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf is worn by ring, and Dickens tops pinky. They can act out their epics, perform their prose, make their poetry into a production and generally be puppet prima donnas. War and Peace in my palm, Dalloway on my digits, a Chuzzlewit mit, Hamlet atop my hand. Genius. I am so asking for the set for Christmas. Punch and Judy eat your hearts out - Virginia has a nose to rival that of Punch, and surely could wield a baton just as violently. Watch out little Leo.

These literary legends would surely be proud of making it to the exalted iconographic status of finger puppets.

I'm hoping to make it to the thumb one day.

S.W.A.L.K

Woe. Is. Me.

One beer and one trauma can render me a rain-sodden, snot-faced wreck of a foetal positioned creature. Red biro scrawled eyes. Eyes wide with despair, staring imploringly into the drizzle. Pathetic.

The eyes ceased staring and began weeping, however, when it was discovered that not only mere objects and the outward trappings of modern society can be thieved, but also ART and TRUTH and SENTIMENT.

Sealed within a first class stamped envelope lay a piece of me, destined for more wild, northern, homely parts. This piece of me was in the physical form of a moustached sea-faring man with a fish for a hat. Above this fish was Charlie Chaplin with a fishing rod, and below the nautical-striped top of the fish-wearing man was a character in a dinner jacket about to dive into a river. A pale blue silver star was in the farthest corner, and turquoise swirls were painted along one side of the fishy figure. The words 'full fathom five thy father lies' were inkily etched amongst these sea-like swirls. This vision opened up to an illustrated message of ardent anniversarial happiness, signed with all my love and elaborate flourish. And x times two, marking the spots to which I owe a lot, both head and heart.

And now it may as well lie five fathoms deep... Unless this thief of my thoughts, this mugger of my masterpiece, this plunderer of my post, was inspired into epiphany and saw the light - the bright light of the red post box, where the envelope wished to dive. It would warm my cockles if Mr Michael Edmund Kirk did indeed receive his piece of me, due to the redemption of a thief. One can only wait. And hope. And pretend to put it down to the postal service and their strikes. Because I want to think of humanity as better than a thief of birthday love.

Flagellatory Monks

When not drinking questionable White Russians or dreaming vivid visions of animal warfare, in which I lead parrots and foxes into battle following rallying speeches, you can hedge your bets on finding me weeping over Keats in the library.
UCL Main Library, my second home, is lacking in sentiment these days. So, caused by lack of sleep and Keats' beautiful ill face, I am bringing poetry-provoked tears into the shelved enclaves. They are needed, I feel, as the artistic and literary sensibilities are being slowly quashed by rules and regulations.
Leaflets litter the tables notifying students that they can now be fined for various offences. They (the MAN) can wrangle £20 out of you for 'misuse of library card'. Misuse? Like using it as a fork or something? And £20 for 'exiting via a Fire exit'. Seriously? They want us to burn? Admittedly this was followed by 'except when the fire alarm is activated' in parenthesis... The money, according to the Old Testament Library Commandments, all goes to the UCL Student Hardship Fund. Well, more students will be faced with poverty and hardship if they are continuously fined extortionate amounts, so this seems rather counter-productive. And, one cannot help but suspect, that this implausible fund is actually the pseudonym of the Librarians' Wine Stash. Though a wee tipple could loosen up Hot Librarian, and we could continue our existential chitchat that was started when renewing Blake...
Next to the rule about not having any food or drink in the library, someone had scribbled 'Slightly Draconian?' How very UCL. Classical references to Draco used as witty graffiti backchat. This is almost on a par with colouring bits of the word 'Book' on the various library fliers so that it reads as 'Poo'. Always raises a smile. This maturity is continued in the various scrawls on the desks. Though I did read one the other day that said 'I am honoured to get a chance to start on a clean slate'. It is unclear as to whether they were referring to the wooden desk, or their LIFE. The library, after all, is my place of choice for emotional breakdown, philosophical exploration, Eureka moments and weeping rivers of tears over Keats.
No doubt I'd get fined for dampening the paperbacks.

Numerical Notion

A heartening thought for seldom-read scribblers (ahem...), philosophers down on their luck, poets in anguish and writers in woe:

Scythrop did not despair. 'Seven copies', he thought, 'have been sold. Seven is a mystical number, and the omen is good. Let me find the seven purchasers of my seven copies, and they shall be the seven golden candlesticks with which I will illuminate the world'.

The crucial thing, of course, is to reach the magical, though meagre, circulation of seven. And not to overshoot this. An eighth purchaser of any treatise or manifesto can cast the whole world into darkness and DOOM.

Dylan wants his swagger back

Ah, people of London! Were you aware that ‘a new counter culture is rapidly developing’? A counter culture that have found their Messiah in the form of Kieran Leonard – ‘a poet’ as many are describing him.

He performs songs ‘focusing, dissecting and meditating on the most immediate and pressing of current issues; from the economic downturn, to media manipulation, consumerism and a loss of spirituality in modern Britain.’ The counter culture of ‘new devotees, turning up in their droves’ to hear their Voice of Reason, their beacon of hope in these dark, dark times, ‘the instigator, origin and vanguard of the movement’ are inspired by the ‘uniquely visionary songs the likes of which haven’t been seen since the days of the sixties beat and protest movement.’ With true grace and humility, ‘knowing that he speaks for so many of his “lost generation”, he delivers his lyrics with blood, grit and a wild look in his eye, comfortable in the assurance that if he is speaking it as he finds, his message is unassailable.’ Straggle-haired, heavy-booted and swathed in a Withnailesque long coat, he puts on a revolutionary show of ‘love, black dogs, visions and traditional troubadour balladry’ with the ‘swagger of an early Dylan’. In the shadowy corner beside the stage, his gimp-on-a-lead accompanies him on the harmonica, lovingly and sickeningly gazing into his master and leader’s spotlit face. Spotlit, that is, by a desk lamp placed on the floor by his spellbinding feet. When not breathing heavily into his harmonica, the gimp mouths along to the thought-provoking, cerebral lyrics of ‘Harold Pinter is Dead’, ‘Oedipus Rex’ and ‘Freudian Marksmen’.

A guy named Jerome, a drunkard channelling a distorted Vince Noir and bellowing out a ramshackle cover of ‘I Smell a Rat’, supports the great Messiah. In a bit of pre-performance banter he informs the crowd that he hasn’t slept for three days, he’s that rock’n’roll. He is later called on stage for a collaborative impromptu crucifixion of some Bob Dylan blues. I stumble out of the basement into the dazzling light. And straight into Carl Barat. He too has come to pay homage to the Messiah.

Inanities

'They were returning from the large heart of Bloomsbury, where the children were frequently taken to learn deportment from the Tanagras in the British Museum. After posing meaningfully as a Corinthian, or practising sinking on a camp-stool like an Athenian, they came home, as a rule, rampageous.'

What on earth is Firbank doing describing a typical afternoon of ours in a novel written roughly eighty years ago? The man's a mystic, evidently. So nice of him to include us in his eccentric work of whimsy. He's an acquired taste, just as Distant Vines or liquorice is. The dandy does hit the nail on the head however; I am frequently rampageous. Rampageous is my middle name. 'Watch out', they say, 'Kirk's on the rampage again. Gird your loins and flee this china shop! I hear her heavy boots on the library stairs - a rampage is what she's asking for!' I am, as a rule, rampageous. And me and my Roman nose make a damned fine Athenian.

Viney Vino

Ahh, Distant Vines... A name evocative of mellow sunsets, warming and intermingling fresh flavours, aromatic vapours, and evenings sipping from vintage tumblers on the veranda.

In reality it was dirt cheap, the colour of neon blushes and tasted of Ribena laced with meths. And classily consumed out of teeny plastic faux-wine glasses that made the drinker resemble the BFG sipping from dolls' house kitchenware.

That's what comes from shopping in a King's Cross Costcutter. Do not be tempted by the lure of the poetically labelled Distant Vines. The vines may be distant, but the vomit less so.

Diary of a Gnomebody

I was delighted and charmed (a rare thing for me to be both of these things at the same time - probably due to my ineptitude at multi-tasking - so the cause of such a marvel must be truly remarkable) to discover a treat of a long-surpressed childhood memory belonging to a companion of mine. We were on t'Heath of an early evening, chatting as one does about Devon, when his eyes grew wistful and he embarked upon a lovingly rendered account of bygone days at Gnomeland, waxing lyrical about this remembered idyll.

And it is no wonder the time he spent there has stayed with him all these years, still conjuring a smile to his now ageing and jaded features. It sounds amazing. Visitors have to wear Gnome hats in order to fit in with the community, so as not to alarm them (obviously) or in any way excite their wary natures to perceived danger. They can be viewed in their natural habitat, going about their chores. All aspects of their lives are open for observation. There is even a Gnome graveyard. It is better to be educated on matters of life and, indeed, death at an early age. And how better to do this than through Gnomes? The hierarchical nature of a working, productive society is even in evidence, with the hard labour being the job of the Pixies. Pixies are represented as lower-class citizens, and are treated with suspicion by Gnomes. It is interesting to note that it is possible to purchase souvenir figurines of Pixies in the Gnomeland gift shop, but not Gnomes. My companion, who I imagine to be the spitting image of Chuckie from 'Rugrats' in his extreme youth, has such a figurine in his attic at home. There is also a wicked Troll present in Gnomeland. Apparently he is always hungry. Hmmm... Demonisation of the needy, perchance? An attack on those who look and act differently, perhaps? Gnomeland serves to be a true microcosm of the greater world methinks.

Yet it was also a fun day out for my companion. One that has gone down in the annals of time as a Thoroughly Good Holiday. Now I understand why he is so attached to his felt-tip picture of Gnome Coward - an interpretive work of art drawn by his flat mate's fair hand after hearing an account of a particularly vivid dream. It should be framed, forever a reminder of a wonderful, and educational, place.

Honey, I'm Home

The observant, and impatient, readers of this pink-hued page will have doubtlessly noted the brief hiatus in blogging of late. This is due to the Beelzebubic bus journeys, bubonic blood blisters, battles with buggering blu tac, breaks for Billy Elliot, and banishment to the barren land of No Internet that is MOVING.

Highlights of the whole experience include the valiant pair of pro tem removal men being mesmerised by the image of an outsize Mad Hatter hat as it was blown down the street whilst a Chinese girl excitedly declared her love of Alice, a smelly barefooted urchin getting frostbite whilst defrosting a pea-studded freezer, a Moomin trying to hang itself from the threads of a charity shop skirt/curtain, the magical metamorphosis of a sofa turning into a packaged bed-in-bits, two technophobes coming up with a password for the new wireless broadband connection that linked with my special subject essay on sex in Austen, and the most weedy of folk generally trying to be butch as Hell's Angels as we attacked the stairs with heavy and awkward objects. Let's just say we were less than angelic, and probably deserve to go to hell for the language that was provoked during those clunky-bumpy times...

But the Heavenly Heath, Arcadian attic and Empyrean atmosphere more than make up for whatever hellish hilarity may have occurred, hysterical in all senses.

Normal service shall be resumed forthwith.

I have a complete inability to have more than just the one cog grinding within my hazy head. Anybody who has witnessed me attempting verbal coherency at the same time as texting, or verbal coherency when holding the lead of a curious dog taking me for a walk, or verbal coherency at all really, knows this. Unfortunately. So, to counter this mental dyspraxia (because a day without a reference to some sort of dyspraxia is a day wasted, according to the Pichon school of thought) I regularly jot notable things down. On scraps of paper, in notebooks, typed into draft blog posts...

On opening a draft post with a swift tap of the keyboard (which, incidentally, is not half as satisfying as ripping open real post, flourishing the letter opener with violent excitement) I discovered I had written the three following things:

Chuck Bass looks like Voldemort.

Tights are NOT pants.

Penn Badgley = HOT

After a moment of mystification, I concluded that I must have been suffering from mental exhaustion, become cuckoo due to too much time spent with only my own lunacy for company, and been not a little bit drunk.

I shall explain myself. Last week I made the grave, grave mistake of getting into Gossip Girl. Yes, the American show that is taking over the world. There is no need to look at me like that, I am aware that I have reached new lows and I feel suitably dirty and ashamed. But hangovers, the big bed of G, and the new-found freedom of lazy days after a week of office slavery does things to a girl... Such as driving her to watch 10 episodes in one day. I am not proud.

I am, however, a working girl once more, so the slovenly rut has thankfully ended. Though my addiction to those irresistible Upper East-siders and their glossy, bitchy world continues. After a long week, a glass of wine (or more) and an episode (or two) is the perfect way to unwind.
And the dapper suited villain of the show Chuck Bass does look like Voldemort. The Queen Bee Blair Waldorf was most correct when she shouted at one of her fawning underlings that 'Tights are NOT pants!'. And the brilliantly named actor Penn Badgley is indeed one of the most beautiful men that ever graced this planet. So actually, I made perfect sense. Even through my overdose fug of trashy pop-culture and wine. Thank goodness I had the foresight to note these gems down... We wouldn't want any of my valuable pearls rolling away now.