Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Keith and Ronnie up a tree, F-A-L-L-I-N-G

I’ve been away. And now I’m back. Back and, since Christmas, rather happy. Yes, I finally found a man who is so smart he’s fallen for my triple bluff and doesn’t realise what a liability I actually am, but then if he will keep smiling at me like that then I am never gonna leave and that’ll teach ‘im. Yessir. Yessirree Bob.

In other news, all the usual nonsense applies. Dead by Dawn’s 13th Anniversary came and went – and despite how few quality films were out there, being a damn genius I still managed to put on a kick-ass event, cos I’m smashing, me. Lots of happy punters, and that's pretty much all that matters.

So, got away with one more of those (at least until the budget meeting next Tuesday which I am a tad afraid of…) and the anthology came out looking rather splendid and has had all sorts of gushing praise from people who know I know where they live.

The book did have all sorts of teething problems, like not including the author’s names against their stories in the contents and me not realising that being curator of the imprint is not the same as being editor of the book and I may have sold myself short and intend to be credited as editor from here on it because that’s the job I do and do rather well, I think.

Also, despite the fact that someone got paid to proof read the book, they clearly ran a spell-check and spent their conned earnings down the pub feeling smug. Whoever it was is a lazy sod. The book was not proof read. I have found too may errors to make me feel generous and say, ah hell they missed one. No they didn’t. They missed fecking hunners of errors and that’s shit.

Still, because of the timeline for the first one I didn’t get to proof the interior of the book (something I am kinda unhappy about but then I did agree to the timeline so I don't really get to grumble) and that’ll all change next time around.

Happily, people seem to love the book and despite its hiccups, so do I. Generous Simon is paying for me to go to Canada in July to promote it, too, so that’s gonna be a blast. Raving about this book is an easy thing for me to do :)

The classic anthology I am still reading as I discovered to my shame that I only know one story in it. That’s a bit feeble, really, but soon to be remedied.

Also, with the festival out the way I am now letting my own book settle back into its depraved and dark space in my head and have started tentatively editing. Well, chopping out the obviously clumsy drivel and trying to actually get it to a state where I can leave it alone long enough to go away and do the forensic and location research.

Which brings me to the reason I thought about writing here again. I just watched the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Actually, I need to backtrack a bit…

My favourite story of the year so far, one that still makes me laugh out loud just to think about it, is the one about Keith Richards falling out a coconut tree. See, from what I gather, he and Ronnie Wood were up a tree (no shit) and he fell out. Then he got up and went jet-skiing, only to fall off the jet-ski. At which point some concerned on-looker (only a tad late) called an ambulance.

Anyhoo, even without Keith, I pretty much want to see this film, and yes it has a whole lot to do with Johnny Depp running about dressed as a pirate. Sigh. I’m a girl. We’ve been targeted. Look at those eyes and tell me it’s wrong.

Sooooo, I went online to watch the trailer. Now, there are some who would call me a harsh and judgmental witch (a fair assessment sometimes) and in this case, I look at the LOTR-ish sweeping scale stuff and the unnecessary fx spending and I think, hmm, Jerry Bruckheimer, you twat, you may have traded in all that goodwill generated by the slow-build buzz of the first film, and in its place be doling out the same tired old fx laden, plot-light, character-dismissing, cliché-riddled CACK that smears every other multiplex screen in blockbuster season. And the rest of the year, sadly.

Jerry Bruckheimer, the man who has ensured the safe financial passage of, say, Pearl Harbor. Con Air. The Rock. Armageddon. Flashdance.

Poot. Now yes, the film will be fun and yes, Johnny will be as fanciably lush and louche as ever, the wee minx. But I beg of a god I don’t believe in, please let it be one scratchy ba’ hair better than all the other uber-budget mince out there right now.

And I now live in Glasgow, about three days a week and the other four in Fife. Or sometimes in smashing hotels on lush weekends away where I am pampered to within an inch of my life by my smashing man. Or pootling about on a glorious loch in a wee boat. Or eating curry. Or driving about in the open-top which becomes a duck-pond-in-waiting sometimes given the vagaries of Scottish weather…

But for now, soup and toast. See, you gave up ten minutes of your life reading this only for me to tell you what I'm having for me tea.

Friday, February 24, 2006

Whu?

You know, I started this post thinking I would talk about what's been happening and then realised that not only are there huge swathes of it I *can't* talk about, but there's even more of it that I'm not even remotely bloody inclined to share.

So the short version is:

I'm alive.
The festival is 8 weeks away.
It sold out in two days.
The anthology is complete and off to the printers next week.
I am moving to Glasgow in May to house-sit Mike's place for about a year.
I'll be spending the summer writing my book.
I'll be spending the autumn re-writing my book.
I'll be spending the winter fretting about how shit my book is.
I'll be spending the following spring promoting my book and feeling like a fraud.
I'll be spending that summer writing a better second book.
There's a man. He's wonderful and I am sickeningly happy.
I'm having nightmares about the 6ft, 200kg jellyfish in Japanese waters becoming sentient and amphibious.

I was invited to go be on a panel in a film festival in Malaga early next month which I was pretty excited about until I realised my passport has expired. I was all set to go renew it, but then found out what it costs and had a complete shit-fit. Those undeserving, money-grubbing, indirect-taxation hoarding FUCKERS that we voted in want a minimum of £51 just for a passport. Is it just me or is that appalling? And if you want it in less than the big ol' 'ish' of three weeks, you can expect to pay up to £108.

I have declined the invitation to Malaga partly because I only had 22 days to get my passport renewed and because you are issued with a new passport number, couldn't even get the tickets bought for me in time, but mostly because I resent every penny of the fee. And I love being able to travel to places that understand quality of life and customer service and positivity and other concepts entirely alien to this sucky country, but I'm gonna have to work up to spending the dosh.

And finally, heard an oh-so-bubbly ad on the radio today calling for all 'new parents and parents to be' to attend THE BABY SHOW at the SECC.

AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Oh dear sweet Jesus and all his little wizards, that'd be a fucking nightmare, no? I mean, I love kids. Kids are great. It's just babies. Horrid little leaking, unfinished, inarticulate lumps that they are. See, when they get to 4, they're fab and I adore them. But babies. Oh god no.

So you too can take your recently spawned thing or your bump to a cavernous, soulless hell-hole like the SECC and have it proven once again just how dreadful the acoustics are when the space is filled with squeaking buggy wheels and screaming infants as orange sales assistants whose only stretch-marks are on their frontal lobes try to bleed every last penny out of you that you should really be spending on a nanny or a holiday with good creche facilities.

If it all gets too much, you can come watch The Omen at Dead by Dawn in April :)

Monday, October 24, 2005

Mother, that albino pea-hen is vogue-ing at me through the window!

It's a long story :)

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Giant Tentacled Love

You ever have one of those weeks when, if you pulled back the curtain and found the Wizard manipulating the world, you’d just punch the bastard right in the face?

So….in no particular order…

I went into Waterstones during the week. I didn’t have a jacket with me. This is only cos the sun had shone for the five seconds it took me to look out the window that morning. Sneaky fecker. Which is how I ended up walking, suddenly accosted by pissing rain and howling wind, down to St James Centre from Filmhouse to see about getting a new pair of glasses, only to realise I’d left my prescription at home. And there’s really nothing worse than having no-one else to blame for your own utter stupiditiness. So I walked home again, only stopping into Waterstones when it got too windy to stand upright.

I looked at the board and it said that Horror was on the ground floor. I must have walked around the ground floor five times before I gave in and went to ask a monkey what was going on. Now, as a horror reader, I am used to the section getting smaller and smaller and mostly being one wall of King, one of Herbert and one of Laymon. Yes it’s depressing, but occasionally they fuck up and stock something interesting.

I found a staff person and said ‘have you finally made the horror section so small it’s disappeared completely?’ and he said ‘yeah, pretty much….did you want a Stephen King book?’

I was still wondering if he’d heard the almighty TWANGGGGG!!!! of my back going up when he added that ‘Herbert is now in Fiction, everything else is in Science Fiction.’

I hate actually feeling a foul mood land on me like wreckage from a mid-air collision, but that’s what happened. I wanted to say something but what do you say? I mean, HOW THE HOLY FUCK did Horror become Science Fiction?? I don’t even really know where to start with just how wrong that is. The appalling thing is that I was vaguely hoping to find an anthology or a writer I didn’t know or just experiment and buy someone I’ve never read before but if I want to do that, I have to wade through all the baggy-sleeved, dragon-poking wank that seemed to populate the shelves of the SF section. I gave up and left, though not before I’d noticed just how extensive the true-crime and crime sections have got. Now, I know that Waterstones will soon centralise all their book-buying meaning that they are about to get as far from the way they set out as it’s possible to get and it’s kinda worrying that inconvenient genres are just getting absorbed and disposed of along the way. What a crock. And now that HMV own them and Ottakars, what does that bode for the future of any kind of independent writing and publishing? I await the day I go into a book shop and there’s only one label for everything and it just says ‘general’ on it. Bastards.

A million other things happened this week, some of which were superb and others which were bloody awful. I went dancing and had a blast, I survived another five days in a boring temp gig and the week ended with these two links from Bobby:

Giant Squid Caught on Camera!

Hypo-Knob-Squid-Sex!

and I guess it can’t be an all-bad week if it ends with giant squid sex.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Black leather driving gloves and a sturdy collar

Hey. I've wanted to post for ages but life has been so busy happening that writing about it seemed annoying and futile. Hurrah!

So here's the catch-up…

The horror anthology thing will happen. This is blinding news. I am so happy. No, really. I want to leap and sing and run around the room but frankly I'm way too fucked, so trust me, inside I'm dancing. The first one will be published in time for Dead by Dawn in April which - will this is glorious news - I am wondering when I am supposed to find the time. My book has to be done before then, and I have a festival to put together, so if only I could find a sneaky secret day to have in between all the regular days that didn't involve me staying up all night, that would be fantastic.

But I'm not complaining. Well, I am, but I don't deserve to.

As for my book, the first 42,000 words seemed to come pretty easy and now I am writing one word a week. This is a shit rate to be writing at, but inspiration eludes me. I need to do some actual research, like talk to a forensic pathologist and some Toronto natives and then hopefully that will help open up much of what is missing. Also, I wrote the Canadian High Commission and asked about grants to pay for me to go to Toronto to do some research. It would be the coollest thing if they said yes :)

In other news, my parents were over and that was funky. No fighting and lots of my mum's cooking, so yay for that. I survived two weeks temping (hate hate hate hate) but have now been paid so THANK YOU JESUS I can now afford bread.

In the street yesterday I got approached by three spotty wee schoolgirls in uniform, two with their camera-phones at the ready and the third who made eye contact then as I went past, tapped me on the shoulder. See, I knew what was about to happen, but reflexes scuppered me. Almost. I turned and side-stepped, she missed whatever she was trying to do with her flailing hand. I smiled at her and said, tell you what, I'll make you a deal. She asked me what. I said, if you try that shit again I'll peel your face off in strips.'

They left.

If it had been my kinda movie, I would have decked her, taken her friend's phone and captured her bleeding, crying and horizontal for posterity, then chucked the phone at her feet. Sadly I am not that hard, and I bet I'd end up in some kind of unfair trouble for having decked a minor. Little bitches.

Oh and I fell in lust again but as the situation is as doomed, complicated and unworkable as you could ever imagine, I have been very mature and restrained and yeah yeah yeah so that's a moral victory (like I really give a shit) but having walked away from something I wanted to indulge in, at least for a while, more than I can find the words to say, I feel I should get a ticker-tape parade or a medal or at the very least a balloon. It sucks doing the right thing and getting no bloody reward for it. So there's little to do but chew the furniture and watch movies, which I am having to do a great deal since Paul gave me 11 to review. Sob. Four down, seven to go. Which explains why I am sitting at the PC on a Friday night, drinking wine which is not nearly as good as it should be, and watching extraordinarily tiresome flicks which I will eventually get round to giving a kicking in print.

Duncan and I have been having odd conversations. I wish you'd heard them - they were doubtless funnier live than reproduced here. Anyway, we were wittering on about nothing in particular when he said something and then took it straight back, saying 'that's something my dad would say.' So I had to taunt him with 'you're turning into your daaaaad' to which he responded 'well, you're turning into your muuuum' and from there we got on to the idea of all conflict resolution should be done with wrestling, pitting like relatives against each other. For me, the idea escalated into a tag-team scenario because, as I told Duncan 'I have five uncle Bernard's' (this is true, though one of them may be dead) and I quite like the mental image of that. Not a dead Bernard, obviously. Scary though it is. It reminds me of Saturday afternoons watching comedy 80's wrestling with my dad, eating home-made strudel still warm from the oven, and endlessly delighted by the site of wobbly coronary candidates bashing into each other's beer guts. Ah those heady days…

Today's random conversation with Duncan concerned a ceilidh I am vaguely obliged to go to tonight thrown by the Taoist Tai Chi Society. I suspect this will not be as much fun as ceilidhs thrown by firemen or policemen or drinking societies, and in the process of bemoaning this - in the light of the fact that all the participants have just been on a 4-day Tai Chi bender and will be all calm and stuff (calm? What is this calm you speak of?) Duncan decided that unlike decent martial arts when you can legitimately say you are gonna open a can of whupass on someone, maybe with Tai Chi you have to say you are gonna open a small pot of humous on their ass. Hahahahaha

Anyway, I don' wanna go to no steenkeeng ceilidh but go I will. I really am not up to pretending to do the whole sociable thing at the moment, when what I really wanna do is bog off up a mountain somewhere, find a bothy, light a small fire and read and sleep and stare at the stars until I feel better.

I went to see Wolf Creek last night. What follows is a bilious rant. Skip to the last paragraph if you'd like to finish on a happy note.

See, it's a full moon. Now, I'm tidal at the best of times but come full moon I can get a little over-emotional. This extends to wanting to pour boiling fat on the ignorant bitch two rows in front of who felt the need to talk incessantly from during the trailers till the end of the end credits. Well done, you classless whore - has no-one explained to you that when the cinema is dark and there are flickering lights on the screen, your gob is supposed to be shut? I know life is complicated, but maybe we can have this small but oh so goddam significant piece of information beaten into you. Now, your boyfriend was kind enough to get up three times during the film to buy you enough food to keep your face occupied, but as you eat with your mouth open, it was hard to hear the (albeit risible) dialogue over the sounds of you sucking unsuspecting popcorn to death.

But I understand your boredom, if not why you are allowed to live. Still, I did sit outside after the movie to see you and your boyfriend with the lights on because if you ever try to set foot in a DBD screening, you will be turned away and the only hard part about that for me will be trying not to cackle while I'm having you thrown out. Small pleasures….

We are lied to, our whole lives. We lie to each other, all the time and usually because we claim we don't want to hurt someone's feelings. This is very kind of us, and besides, we're not lying, we're just being economical with the truth. But then there are the daily lies that we just accept are always going to be there. Ones like - "sale today only" or "this won't hurt" (my dentist has the bite marks to prove how much I didn't believe him) or "I'll call you"

Or today's favourite…."most hotly anticipated movie of the year…"

By whom? Not horror fans, surely, otherwise poor old Pavlov must have fucking whiplash by now. Horror fans are used to being lied to. We keep getting told that some random film or other breathes new life into the genre or heralds some new golden age or is the most exciting, most frightening, most gruesome, most blah blah blah blah blah.

My hole it is.

Wolf Creek is a shining example of what a film-maker in his 30s hacks up when he gets indigestion from a lifetime of watching better movies. To call it derivative is verging on insulting the movies it shamelessly rips off. The kind thing to do is to be blunt. It's lazy, tedious, formulaic, dull and predictable. It's not even nice to look at.

As far as the press has been concerned, the grown-up papers and non-genre coverage is honest about the fact that it's a piece of sneakily misogynistic shit and should be recognised as such. Unfortunately, the fan boys are out there drooling. And we're back to this fucking gratitude displayed by a section of horror 'fans' who seem to think every film is a godsend and we should be thrilled at what we're given. Why? Wolf Creek has nothing to recommend it. It's a superficial, tiresome waste of everyone's time and because every drooling fan runs out to see it on its opening weekend, falling for the excessive marketing, then it does well and so justifies another studio vomiting up a carbon copy in six months time. Stop falling for the marketing. Bill Hicks has this to say...

"By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Thank you, thank you. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they'll take root, I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do. No really, there's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, OK? Kill yourselves, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good. Seriously, no, this is not a joke. "There's gonna be a joke coming..." There's no fucking joke coming, you are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us, kill yourselves, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself."

[For anyone that doesn't know the rest of that rant it goes: "I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too. "Oh, you know what Bill's doing? He's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market. He's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags. "You know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar, that's a big dollar, a lot of people are feeling that indignation, we've done research, huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scumbags, quit putting a godamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet."]

We should know by now that the amount of hype is inversely proportional to the quality of the movie. Simple. Just wait a week, and go then. Please. Please stop validating this shit. You can wait four days. Just four days till the opening take isn't being counted anymore and then go. Then you won't be able to bitch about why there are so many bad movies out there, because you will have stopped contributing to their lifecycle. See, make your own mind up. It's a director you love? A movie you think looks interesting? Then run there with all haste on opening night. But to the hundreds of horror fans that say to me 'yeah it looked shit and I knew it would be bad but I had to see it anyway' I say fine, see it, but FOR FUCK'S SAKE PLEASE wait four days. No amount of message board whining about shit movies is ever gonna make a difference. Do some damage where it counts - reduce the profit. It is utterly adolescent to need to be the first person to see a movie. We've spent a lifetime as horror fans being enthusiastic about the genre, and that's not a love that will or ever should go away but it should not be justification for simpering, obedient gratitude at every piece of monotonous, facile drivel that the industry thinks constitutes horror when for the most part the mainstream industry wouldn't know horror if horror stuck a fucking chainsaw up its suppurating arse.

Aren't penguins lovely?

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Anything for a double six....

So that was the week that was, was it? Can I have a fresh one? Someone spilt something on mine. For reasons too cliched, ridiculous and self-pity-enducing to go into, it's been a week to prove my mother's adage that 'I want doesn't get'. I hate it when she's right. So unjustifiable heartbreak doesn't get any better from 17 onwards? That's a bit of a pisser. Still, I didn't stick a fork in anyone, so I suppose that's something.

In other news, I spent three days temping at the Uni. I like temping at the Uni - my backgammon always improves given the 8 hours a day I am given nowt to do and I can play against serious players online from 9-5. Another week of this and I'll be a grand master. I am always available to play all comers for money, of course.

Yesterday I went to see two films about miserable Europeans. The first, LE CLAN, I really liked. Three brothers locked in a homoerotic spiral of familial dysfunction and small-town trauma. Oh joy. In it’s favour, it was beautifully shot (none of this deliberately wobbly hand-held shite that does nothing but give me a headache) - instead there was actual drama from interesting writing and some fine acting. A rarity. Trust me, I just sat through an entire film festival where disappointingly little of this went on. Also, the three leads are breathtakingly beautiful, and spend silly amounts of the film naked, so even if you don't give a damn about them dealing with maternal bereavement, the eye candy is bloody sublime.

After that, I went to see WHISKY which is a Spanish movie about a sock manufacturer who asks his ageing staff supervisor to pose as his wife when his brother comes to visit from Brazil for their mother's stone-setting (stone-setting being the Jewish ceremony of putting up the headstone a year after the burial, just so's you know). It is one of those films that doesn't do very much but is dryly and sneakily funny from time to time. None of the obvious things happen and it's just three people with very little to say to one another, skulking around the coast in Autumn, watching their lives go by. An odd wee film and I expected to be bored or annoyed by it and was neither.

Last night I went to see the most recent John Waters movie, A DIRTY SHAME. Ever since I saw Divine getting shagged with a claw hammer on a filthy, stained road-side mattress, I've loved John Waters' films. This one is silly, puerile and childish which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. Johnny Knoxville stars as Ray Ray, a sex saint who preaches a life of filth for anyone getting accidentally concussed (an act which switches them between sex addict and neuter each time they get clobbered).

To be honest, if Mink Stole, Patty Hearst, Johnny Knoxville et al were just to lay around in a room drinking and talking shite, I'd still go watch it, but the fact that the last surviving neuter is turned to the wet side by being hit on the head by one of David Hasselhoff's turds ejected from a plane is worth the entry (ahem) alone.

It's main flaw is that it stars Tracey Ullman who doesn't seem to have got any funnier or more talented but for me her one moment of glory as a frustrated sex addict is when she stands, arms and legs akimbo on her neighbour's porch and screams to the stars - "won't somebody somewhere please FINISH ME OFF!!!"

I liked that bit. Maybe it's a girl thing.

What else has happened? Oh yeah, Mo sent me a big bag of skullcrushers which I ate in undignified haste. Huzzar! Also, I emailed a guy I used to go sailing with and he emailed back. One of those weird 'didn't I used to know you nearly 20 years ago' correspondences. Interested to see how that goes....

Dunno what else. My lovely publisher wrote to me and said what I'd written so far isn't shit, which is rather encouraging in a crippling-insecurity kinda way and so I have started writing again, thinking hell, only another 39,500 words to go. Sob.

Yesterday I also watched 17 short films that have come in for the next festival. That is enough to melt anyone's brain but as ever there was treasure to be found. I did also find a very funky feature that is quite definitely not a horror film, but I really liked it anyway. It was twisted and mean and really very invasive and head-fucky but it looked lovely (I was slightly distracted from the interesting story, beautiful lead and sharp writing by frankly the funkiest apartment I've seen in a long time…)

And I'm still sulking that Tony was off to the Iron Maiden gig on Friday night because if I'd had any cash at all I'd have given GNER a silly amount of it and taken up his offer of a spare ticket, but sadly it wasn't to be. Now I get to look forward to him gloating about how good it was. Grrr.

Tonight we are off to Princes St Gardens to watch the fireworks and picnic as if our lives depended on it, and I am totally looking forward to that and am eternally grateful for how organised Seth and Lara are :)

But apart from 'ooh' and 'aaah' from a horizontal position (in the dressed, in public and missing the bod of choice way) there's not much else going on. Emotionally things have been up and down faster than a hoor's kecks but there's sod all to be done about that other than breathe and wait for the universe to go play silly buggers with someone else's head and heart.

And today I should be doing the festival's accounts which are now four months overdue and have the bigger number in entirely the wrong column and I am so dreading trying to explain that one away. But instead I’ve found a backgammon master to challenge. D’oh!

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Wherefore art thou, Romero?

So things are mad, as ever. For anyone I haven’t told about this, I am about to sign the contract for my first book which is due to be published next year. Which of course means at some point I have to finish writing the damn thing. It’s a thriller, or at least has the potential to be, and the second one, if I get asked to write it, will be a horror, the kind that’ll put you right off your pudding.

In other news, I wangled a pass for the International film festival and so have a ten day schedule of screenings that would make a lesser mortal weep. That lesser mortal is me. Around three features a day (relatively easy going for a festival – it can be anything up to 6) that leaves time in between to go to the videotheque and watch as many tapes as possible, as they stock a copy of every UK production or co-production from the last year, features and shorts.

On the big screen I’ve seen some animation (which was ok but all of it not as recent as I expected from Mirrorball) and yesterday saw the new Alex de la Iglesia movie FERPECT CRIME. I love his work anyway (Day of the Beast, Accion Mutante, the sublime La Communidad) and this one although not the sickest thing he’s ever made, is definitely worth seeing.

Today I went to the Neil Gaiman-scripted MIRRORMASK from Dave McKean which is really gorgeous. Very lush, magical and ultimately sweet, it made me cry (twice) and the rest of the time I was in awe at just how beautiful and inventive it was. Aimed, I think, at arty 12 year olds, it’s a lovely film, and quite definitely a big-screen experience.

Second up today was the unutterably shite LAND OF THE DEAD which – even though I wasn’t expecting much – still managed to disappoint me.

I guess that most horror fans have got used to dealing with the fact that many of the directors responsible for making us fall in love with the genre in the first place seem to have lost it. Romero was basically the last great hope for someone to prove that even 30 years on, they could still deliver the goods. Sadly he has failed so spectacularly that although it's tempting to say I hated the movie (I did) and that it was bloody awful (it was), the truth is that it's embarrassing to see such a public declaration of ineptitude from one considered to be a master of the genre.

Bored and insulted most of the way through, I survived an appalling soundtrack, pedestrian and tedious cinematography and dialogue worthy of Pearl Harbour. Add to that a total dearth of characterisation, a plethora of non-sequitur one-liners, racial slurs and morally dubious imagery and the only consistency you have is just how dire it's possible for a film to be.

On a happy note, it seems that George Miller recouped some of his losses by selling Romero the set (and cast and plot) for Mad Max 4, and the rest of the film is chunks of Escape from New York with added Damnation Alley.

We all know the usual trite drivel spouted in zombie flicks about how they come back to life and shuffle through the motions of whatever they used to do when they were living. I buy that. But ironically, it seems to also prove that Romero died decades ago, and this movie is simply his reanimated corpse playing at being a director.

The film uses fireworks to distract the zombies, as they seem unable to tear their eyes from them, allowing the living to get away and it's no major leap of logic to see that the film fits just that profile - it's a piece of commercial product aimed squarely at 14 year olds who wouldn't know a good genre film if it ripped their jugular out, and who just need something flickering and pretty to stare at for a couple of hours. Maybe that's the incisive social comment that I was told to expect...

But for anyone who loves horror and remembers the awesome cool of Night of the Living Dead, there is nothing here for us. It's not as if it had redeeming features that left me willing to find ways to balance the good and bad - there are none, save the end credits - and it never gets so bad it's good again. I'm not going to tear it apart scene by scene (all the people I saw it with today have been doing that since noon...) but it's entirely devoid of suspense, drama and humour, and with cliched second rate effects, I just can't think why anyone would rate this, unless it was in some deluded fanboy fit of Romero ass-kissing.

There were just too many moments when I expected the Team America puppets to pop up and scream FUCK YEAH!! Trust me - when John Leguizamo's character ChoLo announces his plan to go get the big bad dude, he says 'I'm gonna do a jihad up his ass.'

After that (and some coffee and recovery time) I went to see TICKETS which tried hard but is a mess of an anthology movie, it’s delicate, touching moments overshadowed by schizophrenic pacing, mismatched stories and weak writing.

Perhaps doing all this the morning after the opening party (nothing quite like three hours unconscious before facing a day of films) wasn’t the smartest move, but it was a fun party :)

Tomorrow starts with FRANKIE about the mental downfall of a model, then FATELESS, a Holocaust drama and rounds off with THE ARISTOCRATS. A bizzare day's watching if ever there was one :)

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

eeewwww

I was on my way to check my hotmail when the little list of MSN articles caught my eye. I rarely bother with anything except the one click to get me to my account, but occasionally they have such astonishingly banal titles that you have just have to go see what the hell they think people want to read – you know, things like ‘Are hats a thing of the past?’ or ‘Trepanning – is it really so bad for you?’ but on this occasion, there was a reasonably intelligent piece about the shift in numbers of unmarried women opting for alternative methods of getting pregnant. Now, I’m not feeling remotely broody and am generally reasonably happy being single (but would the beautiful one please hurry up and notice me…) but the reason I just had to go and read this article was the hyperlink, which just said (ready?)…

“Single Women Turn to Sperm”

AAARRRGGHHHHHH!!!!! When??!! Does it happen in the night? In the bath? What if I’m on a date? What will my parents say? My grandmother’ll have a fit!

Just imagine the mess if it happened to all the single women simultaneously. S’probably just as well I’m such a strong swimmer….

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Spain. In instalments....

2 August

What a weird day. I got up disgustingly late (around 12 – yay!) and mooched until I heard thunder. The sky went serious black, with that gorgeous pre-storm 40 watt light, and then it rained. Rained and rained and rained for about two hours. As it eased off, dad spent 20 minutes explaining to me how to get to the beach, access the cliff walk and find my way home. Oh right. So I’m being chucked out, then.

I took a book, some cash and my keys and buggered off. So that’s what being seriously unwelcome feels like.

I walked down to a beach ravaged by storm flooding – there to find the sun-grilled English frolicking in a post-storm ocean – only the dimmest tourists would ignore the frantic life-guard who was trying (in vain) to dissuade them from swimming in a cloudy ocean. Had they had any sense at all, they would have realised the clouds came from untreated sewage backed up from blocked drains. Ah fuck ‘em. Evolution in action. There were the largest ‘roaches I’ve seen outside Australia running across the sand, and I made for the cliff walk, glad to be free of the chaos.

The cliff walk takes about 45 minutes to get to Cabo Roig, which is the next area along from us. There’s a bar above the marina there that I like to drink in as I can rest my feet on a small wall, make like a lizard and bask in sunshine, read and drink beer in glasses frosted straight from the freezer.

I got there, having stopped along the way to sit on walls and talk to the ocean. I like talking to the ocean. It thinks I’m stupid but is far too polite to say so. Or distracted. Probably more distracted. Anyway, the route is full of aloe vera plants that look to all the world like dried out squid, jammed head first into dry earth with just their tentacles visible.

At Cabo Roig I went and got myself a beer then sat outside and read. I’d made the mistake of smiling at the barman (as a means of getting served) but it turned out he took this as a major come-on. I should have figured that out with the first wink. I’m almost at the first rant of the day, so bear with me. Or don’t. But I’d rather you stayed. Maybe we could go for pizza when I’m done frothing… :)

Anyway, as I’m reading, the waiter (changed into civvies and obviously finished his shift) appears, mumbles something in Spanish about joining me, sits down with his beer and introduces himself. And winks, again. If I tell you his name was Manuel you must promise not to pull the same face I did…

He grins a grin that shows off both of the last two teeth in his mouth (oh sweet Jesus have mercy on me) then takes my hand and kisses it. Whilst winking. But not the funky kind of kiss that allows for flirting and potential filth (actual filth is usually unbearably disappointing, but potential filth…ah, there’s a reason to breathe…) – this is the kiss equivalent of when some greasy shopkeeper, girls, palms you your change – you know what I mean, right? And leaves you feeling like you want to peel your hand rather than use skin that’s been slimed.

I play nice. He asks me lots of questions. What is your name? (Winks) How old are you? (Winks) Are you here on holiday? (Winks) What are you reading? Blah blah fucking blah. He asks me what I am doing that night. I tell outrageous lies about my boyfriend and I (I use a composite creature that is part the last two ex’s and mostly the one I want) but this seems to have no effect whatsoever. Damn. Then he tells me I have beautiful eyes. I say thank you. He winks. He tells me I have beautiful skin. I say thank you. He tells me I have beautiful lips – I manage not to laugh out loud and then still say thank you. Then, in appalling broken English, he asks me if I have two minutes (two minutes?!) because if I do, I can come along the road with him to his friend’s bar where I can wrap these beautiful lips around……I’m sorry, are you having lunch? I should have asked.

Anyway, I say (in very small words, some of them the limited Spanish I have) that I intend to stay right here, and maybe him and his fetid knob can fuck off and let me get back to my book.

He winks at me. Again. What is it with the fucking winking??

He goes away and I am glad.

And so it gets me thinking. I love to flirt. Ok, so I’m rubbish at it, but dammit the same logic never stopped me dancing. Or having sex. But the flirting thing is very, very dependent on lots of other things. An ability to flirt – or just to feel even the teeniest bit sexy – is entirely dependent. What if I washed and dried my hair and it came out looking like the arse end of Basil Brush? What if I am having a fat day? What if the only thing I feel like wearing is my duvet? What if I’m pre-menstrual and so spotty, clammy, sweaty, bloated, crabby and in silly amounts of pain? What if I’ve just seen a part of me I hate from the wrong angle in the mirror? What if I’ve made the mistake of going shopping and seen myself in a three-way mirror?! What if…what if…what if….

Pretty much all the women I know are susceptible to these and other influences.

But here was a man with two teeth to his name, skin like a pock-marked and battle-scarred ship, bags under his eyes you would have paid excess for at check-in and yet he felt sexy enough (eeewwwww) to flirt outrageously. To expect some kind of (granted, foul) sexual encounter. Does he own a mirror? Is self-awareness some distant, unattainable quality his species lives in revered anticipation of?

Christ almighty, he was repugnant.

Anyway, after that I read till around 6.30pm then walked the next bit of the cliff walk. As I passed along the back of the third beach of three, I found that the last beach has an extra bit tagged on after a breakwater, which is very sheltered, was still basking in early evening sunlight and was utterly deserted except for one guy in the water.

I went for a swim. I ploughed up and down through clear, clean water, then lay in the shallows and let the gentle waves woogle me about for an hour. It felt fucking sublime.

Then I walked ten minutes up the road and nearly home but decided I couldn’t face the parental thing just yet so went to the restaurant at the end of our block where a Russian waiter called Mario always looks after me. He and his co-workers think me odd because whenever I go there, I go alone and always go sit right at the back of the courtyard and read. Just me and a drink.

I got settled and without needing to order, my drink arrived. With a wink. If I can have the South Park ending, I learned something today. I learned about men who wink and what that wink means. Nothing I learned has made me particularly happy. Anyway, I read for three hours and then decided to go home. I was starving.

As I got there, I found my dad on his scooter, all set to go searching for me. It’s not until we are having dinner that I discover this is his third recce of the day.

Now, you would have to be an immature ingrate to be fucking livid at having parents who will come look for you as it gets dark, but livid I was. All I could think was, you chucked me out the fucking house this afternoon, I had money and my phone and my keys and a book – what the holy fucking crap are you doing out looking for me?

Ok, so if I had been dead in a ditch somewhere, my corpse wouldn’t have had to wait until morning to be discovered, but really, I think I can manage.

Jesus, I know it’s wrong to be angry, but I really was. But you can’t complain, can you? You can’t say – what the crap are you doing out looking for me, I’m a grown up, how dare you worry about me? How dare you want to be sure I’m safe?

All the ingredients were there today to make me very happy – a storm-tossed ocean, a livid sky, evening calm, an ocean to swim in, a book, cold beer and random adventures. So why do I feel like the day was only on loan to me, something to look at but not truly experience? I have a redundant need to lay blame, but that’s a waste of time. I was alone, just me and a story and a body of water, and that’s – at least on paper – such an idyllic day for me, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like I was on the end of a retractable dog-leash, expecting at any minute the whim of a bored master to cause me to be reeled in, chastised, restrained and restricted. And that’s shit.

Two nights ago the only way I could process a similar feeling was to stay up all night, headphones on, dancing round my room to seth’nlara compilations. That was fun.
Weird, isn’t it? I got handed a beautiful day, one that ended in me being home safe and sound, and all I can find is fault. What an immature ingrate.

27 July
In the market yesterday I had a genuine Uzumaki moment. The stall where we bought the yummiest bunch of black grapes ever, also had a huge old-farmhouse-stylee wide wooden bucket that was heaped to overflowing with snails. And here we are back again at the what-I-won’t-put-in-my-mouth list. They were alive, obviously, and so the mountain of shells kept shifting slightly, turning and tumbling. As the shells have the most beautiful, intricate spirals on them, this was my idea of Uzumaki heaven. It was especially weird because you could hardly see the actual snails doing the moving, but then when you could, you had to wonder about the people who choose to eat them. They were the colour of sea-glass and don’t appear as slimy as you would think. They are fascinating to watch for reasons I haven’t quite figured out yet, but I was just enjoying the spiral overdose. The shells were the most gorgeous colours and I really wanted some of them, but they had living, crawling snot inside them so I decided I could live without.

Talking of mucus, I made the mistake of watching 15 minutes of Sky news last night. I was going to have a rant about the fact that, having watched the police press conference in the immediate wake of last week’s botched bombings and then watched Sky rewrite the truth over a series of bulletins, their capacity for persistent lying is nothing short of breathtaking. But it’s stating the bleeding obvious so I’m not going to bother.

Today I look like badly-done toast, as I keep falling asleep in the sun and only tanning one half of me. This would be fine if there was jam jam jam spread on the other side, but it’s not that kind of holiday, sadly, so sooner or later I will need to remember to fall asleep the other way up.

I was watching Spanish wasps last night aim their little drills at the ground and buzz away to dig a little hole. Why are they doing this? Is this so they can bury stuff they’ve killed? Have they just done a robbery and need to stash the loot? Are they mental? Do they live sideways and think they’ve reached the edge of the world? Is this some form of perverted waspy sex? I’m going with the hiding-the-food idea. It makes mad sense, sort of. But then how do they find it again? Maybe this is why wasps are so bloody angry all the time – they’re starving to death…

25 July
So we have been without a working computer for about four days. I suppose that’s not so terrible but does it really explain the mood I hit or wandering around aimlessly during siesta, staring at the dead PC and then grumping off again? No, I suppose not, but being without a computer or an online connection has been horrible. Happily, a wee Lancashire man came today and disposed of our corrupted version of Windows and fixed everything. What a hero. I am now free to dribble online again :) Also, I was spared the Georgie Fame gig. Hallelujah! It's been a silly-hot day and I have read and stayed horizontal, which as a lifestyle choice is smashing :)

24 July
My day officially started after no sleep and not making it out for a run in the early hours. A blechy start to the day but after a few hours flat out under a near-midday sun, I felt a little better and tidied myself up for a lunch with new friends of my parents. Israeli Orthodox Jews. You can imagine my joy. The husband had chosen to observe the Fast of Tamuz, an obscure fast of around 8, I think, in any given year. For anyone who doesn’t know, Judaism is kinda big on fasting – you go roughly 26 hours without food or water, although are permitted to take medication if so prescribed and also to brush your teeth (though naturally you should spit and not swallow…). I used to do them (fasts, not my teeth), only now I don’t. Which anyone who’s seen me from behind will have gathered :) Anyway, he’d chosen to observe because of ‘the situation’ though which particular situation he didn’t specify – perhaps it’s bowel and not terrorist related – and his skinny Israeli Yiddish/American wife is only available on one frequency – that of her own voice – as she tunes out rather spectacularly when it’s not available. Stunning to watch, really. They have three sons. So it’s around 40 degrees and I’d gladly stick a fork in my own head if it would effect an ambulance-aided escape. She deigns to relate a story that needs a little explanation – Jews are big on helping each other out – it’s one of the things I like about this religion. The same charity is usually extended in any religion, but as ever, you tend to find that Jews believe they do it better, or for purer reasons. Whatever. It is like that to the extent that every time we were discussing anything – from why you give someone a lift to why you employ someone needy, she kept saying “because we’re Jews. Because we’re Jews. Because we’re Jews” ad nauseum. Not “because we are good people” or “because we’re all human and you do what you can” but “because we’re Jews.” Her story was about a guy who’d called a guy who’d called a guy who’d given him their number. He was in Spain on business for a few days and wanted to make a Jewish connection. Fair enough. During their call, she invited him to Sabbath dinner. Again, fair enough. But after she did this, she attempted to find out “if he was a decent man, you know – was he married, did he have children…?” and there I am thinking ‘that’s the best measure of decency?’ when she says “but he tells me nothing but then an hour before he arrived, a bouquet of flowers was delivered, so I think, ok, he’s a decent man.”

She tells us that she tried calling some contacts in Israel but none of them had heard of him. This is the equivalent of someone in Melbourne hearing I am from Glasgow and asking if I know his mate Jimmy.

She finishes the story by saying “you know, if it had been a woman I wouldn’t have cared, but because it was a man…” and she pulls that shock-horror-distaste face and with both arms makes that ‘keep-away’ gesture. Uncharitable I know, but that’s when I decided she was a moron.

Still, to play nice we talked about cooking and her kids (though sadly not in the same sentence) and afterwards my mother remarks how nice it is that she and I bonded so well.

Laugh? I nearly atrophied.

And lemme tell you this – nothing flattens your appetite more than a man on a fast spreading his hands across the bounty of the table and saying ‘please, enjoy!’

The day began to end a little better than it started when mum and dad went to the beach and I was left to my own devices, which allowed for two hours laying out on top of the house browning the bits of me that are still pale. Just before they came back, I transferred to the front terrace to read. See, in the evening, about 8, the sun finally slips below the level of the porch, so I sat bathed in early evening warmth, lost in The Algebraist, surrounded by bougainvillea and lavender and with Jimmy Cliff on in the background. All very serene.

Parents returned and as a matter of course, my mum turned down the stereo three points. Note to self, in future, turn the stereo three points louder than desirable, so when she does it, hey presto, perfect volume!

With the sun sitting on the horizon, the clouds all fuchsia and soft grey, I went and poured myself a shandy from the jug in the fridge and as I passed my father in the living room on my way back out the veranda, he said…

“Beer won’t help you lose weight, you know”

Thanks, dad.

Since I got overweight in my late teens, I have had 17 years of having insults supposedly framed as jokes in the misguided – oh sweet Jesus Christ how misguided – belief that I could be nudged, cajoled or just plain shamed into getting thinner. Sadly, it never once occurred that hiding in a large body is a damn sight easier than in a small one, and I think maybe if someone had asked me why as opposed to how much, I might have begun to deal differently. 17 years of hating everything about my body, of having days at a time when I couldn’t get up and get dressed and leave the house because I figured the only thing I was fit to wear was the duvet. 17 years of hating shopping (I wonder if three-way mirrors have been classed yet as a major contributing suicide factor?). 17 years of not being able to look in the mirror, of failing to exert even the smallest control over my body, of being surprised and grateful whenever someone saw me naked without honking up their breakfast or turning away in disgust or insisting on only being able to fuck me through a hole in a sheet or harpooning me. Sounds stupid, I guess, but I hated myself for such a long time. It wasn’t helped by the occasional verbally abusive boyfriend, or a stint in Hong Kong where people came up and poked me in the street, or grabbed me or just pointed and smirked, given what a freak I was compared to a city full of slender teeny Chinese girls.

And after all that, I lost three stone (one more to go, maybe, eventually) and with the weight loss – perhaps more due to the achievement than anything else – came the notion that perhaps I deserved to like myself. These days (the good days) I like shopping. Sometimes I even buy stuff. I can look at myself in a mirror. I haven’t had a day hiding under the duvet in nearly two years. I no longer feel the need to invoke Greenpeace protection before getting naked. And when I look at myself I see an imperfect body – I doubt it will ever be otherwise – but I don’t hate it anymore. I finally exerted some control. And yes I love my food and I love my drink and I have little intention of skimping on either. And yes I have the kind of metabolism that puts on weight just by dreaming about food. But when I did lose some weight, I began to lose the image of me as some gallumphing great clumsy unwieldy heffer, only fanciable in the dark and then after all the other women (and soft, yielding pumpkins) on this world and the next have been evaporated.

Now when I’m a clumsy heffer I have no recourse but to admit it’s vodka and dark stairwells to blame :)

See, the women in my family are mostly a certain shape – short, busty, huge arse, shelving back and wee legs. Dear god why even bother trying?!

Over dessert at lunch, would my dad have turned to my mum, who also hates her shape, and said “hey, cake won’t help you lose weight, you know”. No, of course not. So why is it ok to talk to me like that? The worst of it is that he wasn’t being hurtful. Or vicious or personal or unkind or disappointed or disgusted or any of the other things it felt like. So back out on the veranda I sat feeling angry and humiliated and feeling like a big fat failure, which I’m seriously fucking tired of feeling. After he’d gone away, I not only felt like I did at 19 but cried like it too, upset and furious that the same mind-set is still so accessible. Eventually I put the drink back in the kitchen, untouched, and went for a run. But I didn’t feel like I was running for me, for the endorphin kick or the pleasure of feeling myself get fitter. I felt like the only thing I can possibly achieve by it is for my dad not to think me huge anymore. Like when I first lost the weight, my grandmother said (to my face) “it’s so lovely now to have a pretty granddaughter”.

Can’t recall ever hearing her say that before.

Punchline to this is the conversation that ensues when dad sees the untouched drink in the kitchen…

“why have you left your drink?”

”don’t want it anymore – you put me right off”

“Adele, you’re over-reacting – enjoy it….you can always run it off in the morning. Har har!”

So that’s all right then.

23 July
We went to Lonja for lunch today. Lonja is one of my main treats every time I come down here. It’s a restaurant at Mar Menor on the edge of an inland sea, which I think basically happened when much ocean flooded in to cover an earthquake-made hole. The deck of the restaurant extends to the water, and they do the best seafood. There are always stray kittens sneaking about under the eaves waiting for dropped fish (whether dropped deliberately or not), and lunch there is always an extended venture – several hours sneakily feeding the cats, an open blue sky and expansive sea, an appetite woken and prodded with good white wine and roast almonds, followed up with the juiciest prawns, grilled squid and swordfish, crusty bread and lemons straight from the tree. Yu-hum.

I love being near the ocean. Also, it’s kinda nice to be able to lob the occasional prawn tail back in the water as a warning to all the other prawns just what is gonna happen to them…

Also, on this occasion I saw one of the most disgusting things I am ever going to see. No, really. Now, if you are veggie or hate eating seafood then this is going to be even worse for you…me, I get a little icky with some seafood (assumes a HUGE Sid James grin – there are limits to what I’ll put in my mouth, and anything with suckers or tentacles or antenna or sacs falls into the EEEWWWW category).

When you eat whole prawns, you pull the head off and try to tear out the waste strip which is usually full of black stuff, from along the creature’s back. Then you can peel off the shell and with that usually comes the legs. All very foul. Then what’s left is totally yummy. There was a huge family party at the next table to us and they got a couple of massive shellfish platters delivered as starters. With my usual extraordinary timing, I looked across in time to see the father finish his prawn, then take the discarded head, hold it by the curly wavy stringy feelers, and suck out the entire contents. Brains, eyes, squirty juice and unidentifiable goo. It still makes me go ICK just to think about it :)

It reminded me of an ex who used to eat winkles for breakfast and then expect to be kissed. Yeah. Right. That’s gonna happen. Why don’t you go lick out the hoover nozzle, too, just for added flavour.

Anyway, that aside it was a particularly fine lunch. For some bizarre reason the conversation in the car on the way home turned to sin. I had been (albeit gently) bollocked the day before when – in the company of Catholics – I had mentioned in passing the Catholic church’s occasional tendency to acquire gold and forget to do anything with it other than to have it melted down and decorate some room or other. The subject came up because we were discussing a Church-turned-council-party-venue in a small Spanish town that both they and I (but not my parents) had been to, only they’d never been inside and I had. Many times. In there is a room that looks like a small gold bomb went off inside it as everything – floor, walls, ceiling, picture frames, windows, tables, tiles, you name it, is coated in gold. Stolen gold. You can even read a little booklet about how they stole it. Only they don’t use the word stole. They talk about the Church ‘acquiring’ it. Which was the word I used. Still, a gentle bollocking ensued. I have always been much amused by Dougal’s reference in an episode of Father Ted to “that big art gallery in Rome” when trying to recall a visit to The Vatican.

Back to sin. The personal kind, not the accuse-us-and-we’ll-call-you-a-witch kind. I suggested that with the (granted unlikely) addition of a form of confession, Judaism would be in danger of grinding to a halt, if we were given means of alleviating the guilt. Mum reminded me that there’s always Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) which traditionally is spent in synagogue, supposedly beating our breast, fasting and praying to God for forgiveness for our many sins. Which in theory we are supposed to recall individually. I think, from a purely personal point of view, the Catholics have it much easier if they only have to remember a week’s worth of sinning at a time. A day quite simply isn’t long enough for me to get through mine. Do we confess every sinful thought? Every impulse? Every fantasy, daydream, flare of un-witnessed temper? I’d need a week for each day, I think. While the intricacies of Atonement were being discussed in the front seats, I ran through the things I reckon I’d have to confess just from the last fortnight. It did me until well after we got home. For the ones I’ve thought, not the ones I’ve actually done. That’s a whole different kettle of filth. But it does beg the question, am I really sorry? Anyone finding themselves the cuckold in an infidelity who has been insulted with “I never meant to hurt you” knows only too well that what is meant is “I never meant to get caught”. Also, on consulting the dictionary I’ve just found that cuckold only refers to men whose wives have committed adultery – is there a female equivalent? I can think of plenty of glib ones, but am genuinely interested…

Still, in a conversation many moons ago with a friend (the circumstances of which I am unable to fully relate given that it will treble my list of sins), we agreed, at least out loud, that neither one of us feels much guilt until caught. I was lying. I wonder if he was. I’m pretty sure that feeling guilt is not the same thing as being sorry. I am often guilty but rarely sorry. Or rather, sorry that something happened, but not sorry that I did it. Which is, of course, selfish and inexcusable.

The thing that my brain got locked into, though (and with no experience whatsoever of Confession) is - are you supposed to confess every impure thought? My fantasy life is precious to me. It passes the time on anonymous bus journeys, in meetings, while I’m staring at a book or a movie, when I wake early and have treasured time to myself, when I walk anywhere – should I feel bad about the ludicrous scenarios, filth, violence and theatrics I allow myself to visualise? Without impure thoughts, I’d spend my time rocking and drooling in a corner, I reckon. With nothing even remotely fun to think about…

Actually, right about now I’m seriously sorry I started this ramble :)

21 July
You know you watch too many horror movies when….the three of us drove out last night to have dinner with friends of my parents and en route passed an everything-store – you know, the kind that can sell you a clockwork mouse and a leaf-blower and possibly also some love beads and a trowel? Anyway, propped up against the front door they had a fantastic and proper pitch-fork. Being in a major agricultural centre, this is hardly surprising, but was I thinking farm-y thoughts? No, I was thinking of all the movies where I’ve seen one stuck into the back of someone’s head.

Dinner was yummy and washed down with silly amounts of red wine, which helped to take the edge off the tour of their new house that we got on arrival. Now, I don’t begrudge them their delight in their new home, but there should really only be so much you can say about tiles and light fittings. It took nearly an hour to be shown round one master bedroom, two guest rooms, two bathrooms a kitchen, a lounge and – and this is the good bit – ten whole minutes stood looking into a dark hall cupboard talking about the increasing rarity of good hoover storage space. After all that, trust me, drinking was the only thing that could help. Still, they turned out to be really nice people so I am just being churlish about the house tour.

Mum had bought them a house-warming present too, which the lady of the house was having difficulty opening and asked her other half to go get some scissors. Which he did. But he walked back across the slippy tiled living room floor with them already on his fingers as if he was cutting something, as he came up behind her to hand them over her shoulder. How fecking dangerous is that?! I had an image in my head that involved the kind of puncture you can’t stick in a bath till it farts and then patch with a handy bit of rubber. Like I said, you know you’ve watched too many horror movies when….

Went for a run this morning and then back to sleep (my prize for getting up at half six is not to have to get up again until 11) and now there’s an estate agent downstairs come to value the house as it’s on the market but we are inviting more agents to try and sell it. Last thing I heard him say as I ran upstairs is “I’m going to be perfectly honest with you….”

Oh yeah? What kind of rubbish estate agent are you?!

Also, I’ve just realised that Michael Marshall has a new book out which I haven’t read and he’s in good credit with me, despite how turgid I found Straw Men to be, so I’m off to buy that once I’m done with the Margaret Atwood thing I’m reading about a 19th Century 15 year old murderess.

I really want to go out onto the upstairs terrace and sunbathe but am loathe to until the estate agent has done his appraisal and gone away – last thing I need is the house particulars written up with the phrase “bikini-clad heffer not included” :)

It's actually so silly hot today that rather than sunbathe in the traditional manner (ie, having to go to the effort of actually turning yourself over) it would be so much easier to be roped to some kind of spit, and have a manservant turn you, occasionally basting you in Factor 8 and dousing the flames when you start to combust. Where is that legion of buff, toned, beautiful, devoted and endlessly horny manservants anyway? Lost in the post along with the perfect man, I suspect. Wouldn't that be awful, if the perfect man was slowly suffocating in a big ol' comedy man-shaped parcel in a sorting office somewhere. Knickers, I bet that's what happened. I bet he's got my marbles with him, too. That would explain a whole lot.

Off to bake what's left of my brain :)

19 July
Before I got here, I was in London to see NIN who ROCKED. First time at the Brixton Academy (such a cool venue) and a great gig. I've wanted to see them for so long and they were superb. We followed that up at the weekend with me and Lara and a girl I know called Ele going through to Glasgow to see Rammstein. Who also ROCKED. They had the best stuff!!!! Mic stands on fire, mad elephant-trunk-stylee flamethrowing headgear, fireworks, loud stuff, hot stuff, flashy stuff and fire, fire, FIRE!!!! I love seeing them live. They are just the best showmen. And not half as ugly as some would have us believe. At least one guitarist was just asking to be spread on toast...although naturally we were there for the music and wouldn't have been caught thinking the band buff and edible. No, no, no. We certainly didn't think that about Trent either. Oh no.

Anyway, my mad rock bubble is about to be burst as I am being taken to see Georgie Fame this weekend. Am considering sneaking something in my pocket and listening to Sehnsucht throught, but am in danger of getting carried away and moshing, which may turn out to be a first at a Georgie Fame gig :)

Anyway, to say it's hot here is ludicrous - I can hear my brain boiling in its own juices, although that is the reason I wanted to come down here at this time of year, so am happy :) There is little to do but eat and read and sleep and drink, which sounds like a holiday to me. In a fit of deranged, heat-induced lunacy, I've been going running at half six in the morning, which leaves me feeling entirely smug. And overheated, shagged out and drenched. Yu-hum. Such a good look.

Mum and I had our first argument today too - I tried to reiterate that I am not a moron and am entirely capable of deciding when it is getting too hot and to go for siesta. She on the other hand has decided to treat me like an idiot because down here "it's a different kind of sun" and I need to be reminded, daily, about the dangers of sunbathing.

Sadly, just when I thought I'd made my point, I realised that I'd missed a bit with the Factor 8 and have indeed burned myself, just a teeny bit. Bugger. Have taken to tanning the back of me until it stops being pink as I absolutely cannot face the 'told you so' response, which will be meted out hourly until my death and possibly a few years beyond. Hahahahaha. Shit.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

London in the sun

Tuesday
Apart from the fact that it’s clearly criminal to spend five hours on a train on such a glorious day, the massive upside is that the coastal bit of the run is little short of spectacular (McGlashan was right – Scotland did invent the best countryside ever). The train was surprisingly empty so rather than hide with music on and wish everyone would go away, instead I kicked my shoes off and curled up to watch the beautiful green and blue trundle by.

But pity the guard. When the poor guy came round to check tickets, he got accosted by a man (50’s, bad shorts) who picked a fight. His point, if you can call it that, was that he’d been told in Glasgow that if he wanted to get the 12 noon train from Edinburgh, he needed to get the 11am train from Glasgow. Fair enough. If it’s running on time, it would give you a whole 12 minutes to change platform in Waverley. Personally, I wouldn’t leave it that tight, and would get an earlier train. Which is what this guy did. But his argument was that such information was irresponsible and what was the guard going to do about it?? The annoying man now said that his wife and he had been so confused by the irresponsibility of the (different) rail company that she had ended up missing the train that all this was happening on. By now the guard looked like he was about to retire 20 years early and go raise goats somewhere. But I couldn’t help thinking that it was kinda rude of this guy to bog off and leave his wife and have them both get to London hours apart, but also what a div. I mean, seriously. If you can’t work out how to join up two simple journeys then you are in danger of turning into a goat. To be raised by a twitching, strung-out ex-GNER ticket inspector….

The other weird thing on the whole journey was that in all that sunshine, when the schools are on holiday (they are, aren’t they?) there were no kids out playing anywhere along the whole route. Not one – not in the gardens or parks or streets or playing fields. Is that weird? It reminded me of the last time I was in Belfast (a very long time ago) when there were no kids out playing either, but then to be fair, the estate gardens were all bound by barbed wire and there were soldiers and razor wire and barriers and high fences all over the place, so obviously not an atmosphere or environment conducive to having kids running all over the place, but yesterday it was odd not to see any.

The best bit though was passing by Berwick where there’s a caravan park on a hilltop overlooking the ocean – all very pretty, and there was a guy out by his caravan, lounging in a deckchair, which all looked relaxing and summery except that he was sitting with his back to the ocean. Which meant he had a lovely view of a wall and the occasional GNER train. What a weirdo. Why would you park your huge static caravan on a picturesque hilltop with the glory of the ocean spread before you – particularly yesterday when it was all glittery and smooth and calming – and then stare at a wall?

Another goat-in-waiting if you ask me.

Getting into Kings Cross at rushhour is always such a giggle, and if I’d had any conniptions about going on the underground, they weren’t helped by getting swept along with thousands of people into one of the furthest, narrowest corners of the station as only the Metropolitan line is running from there. In Moorgate, with only one stop to go, I had to watch four trains come and go before there was any room on one, and it’s not overly fun being squooshed into a carriage with zillions of other people, all reading papers about the bombings and having extra security warnings broadcast at you every thirty seconds, just in case you’d forgotten to be vigilant. Or stressed. Everyone seemed twitchy, which is perfectly understandable, and it was good to get where I was going.

So, met the girls, did high-speed gossiping over rather good wine, then legged it over to Soho to meet Hugh and Mark, drink Mojitos and Perlitas, then stuff our faces in BaliBali (totally recommendable Indonesian place on Charing Cross Road – looks like tourist hell but is seriously fantastic) and then Hugh and I bogged off to Roadhouse (hahaha, how predictable was that?!) where we drank ludicrous cocktails and people-watched. It is the best place for people-watching. The girls are like those sardine-balls in Blue Planet, all swirling about in a dizzy panic, getting picked off one at a time by sharks in a feeding frenzy. A nice man called Anton and his two mad friends bought us a round, cos we were laughing at them (with them, at them, with them) as they danced like deranged muppets. They were having such a good time :)

I broke my shoe when I caught it on a step, so am going shopping today in my big black boots which I only brought for the gig, so I am gonna melt on Oxford St until I find cool shoes to wear. And tonight it’s the gig. I am a tad excited.

Time to go play. More tomorrow.

Thursday
New shoes. Mmmmmm new shoes. I shopped and shopped and shopped yesterday and apart from my shoes, bought nothing. Fashion is so horrible right now. If I’d wanted something jade green and randomly elasticated that should really only be used for straining cheese through, then I’d have been well happy but as it was, it was just a world of ugly.

Eventually it was too damn hot to do much, so I headed home to change before coming back out to meet Chris from Metal Hammer for a pint. On the way home, on the Northern line, there’s an announcement that we’ll delayed because of a security alert (there was a controlled explosion of a bus yesterday). I looked at the open doors and considered getting off the train but stayed. When we then got stopped halfway through the tunnel for 20 minutes, I was less than happy. I am claustrophobic but am quite good at not freaking out, but yesterday was no fun.

Anyway, got back uptown and met Chris and he introduced me to some of his colleagues who in turn introduced me to some other people and all sorts of random, fun and possibly productive project suggestions were made – as is always the way with these things, most of them will never happen but there’s a ton of potential there.

Then we all pootled off to Brixton where we found a bar with a beer garden which is when it started pissing down. I knew I was going to come *out* the gig soaked but to go in drenched was mince. At least the rain was warm :)

Once settled, I met up with Lara and Seth and went to see NIN. Who rocked. A lot. Scottish audiences, Lara noted, are bouncier, which I think is true, but Mr Reznor was blinding. I had such a blast. As I don’t know about such things, I’m not sure what the difference is, but there was some pounding bass that came up through the floor into my legs, and then there was some that made my throat pound, and some that just gave me goosebumps. It was LOUD and felt very, very good indeed :) I’ve wanted to see them live for so long and bounced all the way home. Brixton Academy is also very cool inside (tho not last night, what with 4000 NIN fans, but still…) – it looks like the exterior of a bunch of buildings with towers and turrets – with climbing ivy painted on and some things that looked like real trees in the upper reaches, but I guess were only models.....still, because the ceiling is so dark, it looks at first glance that the place is open to the sky. The thing I loved was that The Rez cast a HUGE shadow up one side of the proscenium arch and it was like seeing Peter Pan’s errant shadow having snuck out the bedroom in the middle of the night and gone clubbing :)

Afterwards I trundled home, ate strawberries and cream, watched a bit of telly, blethered to Chris and finally crawled into my bed at a sensible time.

Thanks to a random and surprising call yesterday, I am meeting up with a friend this afternoon before he heads off to Africa on Saturday, and I have lunch with Total Film (I think) then drinks with people from Fox later and then I’m gonna go meet Rob for a drink and a bite to eat and it just feels like it’s building up to be one of those gorgeous days full of interesting company.

And maybe just maybe my neck will forgive me for last night in time for me and Lara to go do it all again at the Rammstein gig on Saturday night. Huzzar!

Also, is the Radio 2 newsreader really called Fenella Fudge?! That's so cool. She should be a superhero....

Saturday
Ahem. Ok, so the London trip was supposed to finish at 3.30pm on Friday. Are you sitting comfortably? I did indeed meet my mate Andy for drinks in the afternoon after a very nice lunch with the editor of Total Film (at which I behaved and ate salad and drank water) but made up for it with Andy as we vegged outside the Fitzroy Tavern, watched the world go by and drank muchly. Though not too much. Afterwards, I headed down into Soho when he had to go, as I was meeting people from Fox, one of whom was running late, so more drinking there. After that, Rob turned up (YAY!!) and we ran off, first to a bar he was thinking off on New Oxford St which turned out not to be there anymore, and then back to the Fitzroy where we stayed until closing and were joined by one of his housemates and three of his friends for a while, who were all lovely, though I was a tad harsh with his mate Graham who thought Day After Tomorrow was a good film. What??!! Anyway, after closing (with the promise of a sofa to crash on), Rob stayed out and we went to the CroBar (of course) and stayed there till 3am then trundled up the road. We sat and drank tea and talked till it got light, then I went to bed. Ah well, you can't have everything, I guess, and then in the morning we had breakfast and headed uptown. Me, I had a publisher to meet for lunch and he had to get home at *some* point :) I called my friend Hugh as I got to Soho Square, as he works on the corner, and he came exploring down Dean St with me to find the place I was suppoed to meet Simon.

Now, the short version of this lunch is that by the time I had to leave, we were one huge steak and two very good bottles of red into the conversation and I was having too much fun to leave. I was promised an evening at the mercy of his friend, Attila Buddha (no kidding...) who is a wine merchant, and to be honest, it would have been shameful to pass up the opportunity :) So that's what happened - there was sublime company, silly amounts of fine wine, a very late night, a disgustingly early morning and I finally made it, still drunk, onto the 8am from Kings Cross. As I got off the train at 1 with visions of a shower and a great deal of sleep, my phone rang and it was my friend Sara reminding me we had a lunch date. Just what I need - two more bottles of wine and no kip. Sob. So although a lovely lunch was had, I was feeling pale and a bit jelly-legged and she packed me off home early. Just in time to get changed and go to Rammstein. Who, as I may have mentioned, ROCKED. Anyway, I had a thoroughly lazy Sunday which was made weird by going to see PUNISHMENT PARK, which you should see if you ever get the chance. Frightening anyway, but now so close to reality as to feel more and more like the news...

After that, I did random packing and was more than ready to get on a plane...

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Nine Inch Nails

THANK YOU to the lovely Lara and Seth who have given me a ticket for Nine Inch Nails live in London next month as a late birthday pressie. This is just the coolest thing ever.

WOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Did I mention I was going to see Nine Inch Nails live?

WOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Did I mention I was going to see Nine Inch Nails live?

WOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Did I mention I was going to see Nine Inch Nails live?

WOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Never seen them, always wanted to and now, Cinders, you shall go to the ball.

Very happy woman today.

Also, I just found out Rammstein are playing up here that week too, so with a bit of luck I'll be on my way to Spain black and blue and deaf and grinning :)

King of the Mingers

Many years ago, a torn-faced witch of a boss of mine looked over the partition at me, and apropos of very little (other than a failed marriage, no discernible dates and two teenage daughters getting more than enough for the three of them) said "You know you'll never find a man strong enough for you, don't you?"

That was something of a slap in the face at half past three on a wet Wednesday afternoon but as I was entirely unsure how to respond, I left it well alone. I did, however, move my chair back a little so I wouldn't get caught in the blast radius when the house was dropped on her.

It's been bothering me since, but not for the fact that to date at least, she's been right.

Anyway, it came to mind for reasons best known to my mis-wired subconscious as I was walking home from the pub last night just before midnight. On a Saturday night. I got confused looks from drunk men (apparently I'm not fat or ugly enough to merit intrusive comment these days) and pitying looks from women all of whom, without exception, were dressed like the worst kind of trashy movie whore.

See, there are those films with tasteful whores (think Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places) and those films with comedy whores (think Crocodile Dundee) or films with real whores (and I'll be damned if I can think of any right now) - but those films that want you to see the seedy side of a city. Hillside Strangler did that quite well last year, although the movie is an offensive piece of crap. Still, the whores did look reasonably authentic. Or you could go look at the girls who populate the roundabout on the highway near my parent's place in Spain.

But it strikes me that the discerning, pissed-up, under-educated, grunting, badly-dressed moron trying to get value for his £15 (and not just a third-rate blow-job behind a skip somewhere) would be hard-pushed to tell the city whores from the city mingers, even on a good day.

You know that only mingers are holidaying on the Costa Brava these days when the lads would rather risk life, limb and hard-on crossing four lanes of motorway traffic to get to a bored whore who will just give them a third-rate blow-job behind a skip. But at least the weather's better, eh?

Anyway, as I walked home through crowds of pregnancy scares waiting to happen, I ruminated on the average woman's total inability to dress herself, although judging by the doorway action, getting undressed isn't quite so much of a problem.

See, I would love to say, hand on heart, that any woman should wear whatever the hell she damn well pleases if it makes her happy. No really. But then I feel just as strongly that it has to be a good idea to dress in a way that accentuates all your strengths and makes you look your absolute best. This rarely extends to lemon yellow ra-ra mini's and strapless white tube dresses nicely set off against corned-beef legs. Which, on a total aside, reminds me of a scary French sausage called anduillette (I think) which is a white bag of lumpy gristle with added multi-coloured mysteriees and when you grill it, it looks like a waterlogged corpse exploding.

The streets last night (and most other nights) were full of women who saw something that looked fantastic on the hanger, bought it, crammed most of their cellulite into most of it, added a pair of canary yellow stiletto's and ventured forth. Looking like scary French sausages.

Oh thank you, uber-minger, for making me feel dead classy.

Last week I saw a hen party staggering their ugly way down Cockburn St. 11 women all wearing the kind of boho-chic that even looks bad on the fashion pages, but amongst them one woman (lucky bitch was over 5'10" if she was an inch) in a very short black simple dress, glossy hair, legs that went on for forever (they were tanned too) and she was seriously striking. She had the kind of body and the kind of walk that would leave men dribbling as she went past. Good on her. I hate her, but good on her anyway. Then she stopped across the road from where I was sitting, bent forward, and lifted the back of her dress, flashing her (doubtless perfect) arse at some guys a block behind them. Then when done, she clapped her hands, squealed and ran around high-fiving her girlfriends. Not quite so classy. Then, just in case they'd forgotten her, she did it all again.

So you wonder….why? Well ok, I wonder why. I have a cleavage you could lose the rescue dog in, never mind the skier, but I never ever get the urge to flash it at anyone. It's hard enough getting undressed in front of one person without giving the world a gander. I'm sure most men would be appreciative, but what would be the point? No, that's not strictly true - what's in it for me? That's a much better question. What the holy crap would be in it for me?

A couple months ago I was in my local with a bunch of people I've known forever, and with them a guy I'd never seen in there before. We are all chat-chat-chatting all night and it's a very pleasant evening. I had on a black zip top and under it a vest that was doing my head in. It's reasonably low cut but gapes in the middle (it has since been stitched shut) so I spent half the night trying to close the gapey bit and was wishing I'd worn something - anything - else.

At some point, the new man said "Have I bought you a drink yet?" I answered no. He said "I'd like to buy you a drink. What are you drinking?" So I told him and he went up to the bar. I went to the bathroom and when I came back he was still at the bar so I went to talk to him while he was waiting to be served. When he had both our drinks he held mine out to me. Before letting me take it, though, he said "Well, you've been flashing your tits at us all night like a whore, so I suppose you've earned this."

I told him where he could stick his drink and went and bought my own. What fucking planet do I live on that that's considered an acceptable thing to say to someone?

The conversation often goes around the intelligent, single women I know (the women who have found someone wonderful are thoroughly envied, trust me) about the fact that if only we were stupid and girly and behaved in thoroughly non-threatening and silly ways, we could attract no end of male attention. But that's missing the point. Male attention is easy to attract. Insultingly easy, most of the time, but it's attracting the attention of someone worthy that's so bloody difficult. Hence my original point, if I had one.

So I'll never find someone strong enough? Ok. I'd rather be on my own than with someone feeble. But strong enough for what? For me? Am I really so scary? Strong as in confident, brave, secure and capable? Is that really so much to expect? Strong enough to be faithful, that would be nice. Strong enough to be the other whole person in a relationship, that would be nice.

But according to at least one wicked witch 'women like me' don't stand a hope in hell.

A friend of mine (infinitely scarier than me - when a mutual friend introduced us he told me he reckoned we'd either be friends for life or kill each other on sight…) met her gorgeous and devoted husband when she drove him home after a meeting. She'd had an appalling day and was in a fearful mood - livid, fuming and resentful of the diversion on the way home. He thought she was scary and wonderful. She could barely acknowledge his presence. He wanted to see her again. She was oblivious. Is this how it has to be?

It can't be that the world is just full of Neanderthals who only want to fuck some pastel-clad screeching minger in a doorway surrounded by spilt chips and vomit.

In any decent scientific experiment that involved as many variables as my love life, there would at least be control. Where is the control, dammit?

There's a wonderful quote in Lanark, which I am loving reading. Lanark encounters a mad Scotsman when seeking refuge from his emotionally volatile wife and newborn son. The man says to him:

"You see, women are different from us. They're seventy five percent water. You can read that in Pavlov."

After a moment, Lanark said "Men are mostly water, too."

"Yes but only seventy percent. The extra five percent makes the difference. Women have notions and feelings like us but they've got tides too, tides that keep floating the bits of a human being together inside them and washing it apart again. They're governed by lunar gravity; you can read that in Newton. How can they follow ordinary notions of decency when they're driven by the moon?"

So that's my excuse. I must be tidal. That would at least explain why the miserable, self-indulgent bits of my grey matter are sloshing back and forth in messy whorls of dead dogfish, opaque glass, blue rope and wooden crates.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Hey! Those geese are honking!

21 June, Summer Solstice - the longest day and the shortest night of the year.

Longest day began as a piece of irony I refused to find funny. I'd had an abysmal night and woke feeling sluggish and surprised at having finally managed to get some sleep. Ignored the day as long as possible then had a bath (never a good sign when the long dark teatime of the soul kicks in before noon). I crashed, woke, crashed, ate, crashed, read and crashed. That helped two hours go by. Then just as I dozed off, a friend called and not only gave me whining privileges but helped to make some of it better (thanks, Al).

After that, I dozed properly, then got dressed and went to meet Lara for a run. We haven't been out for two weeks so I was dreading it, but as it turned out, not only was it a gorgeous evening but we finally managed to complete our first target. That felt pretty damn fine, let me tell you. I even did a lap of honour round a tree at the end of it :)

It's becoming like Twister though. Last time, the move I made was Left Ankle Swollen. Today it seems to be Right Knee Twinge. All very worrying. We both feel ridiculous running around, even though we both don't look it, but as Lara gets spots before her eyes, I begin to wonder if one day I will just hack up a lung :)

She mentioned that Solstice plans were being made, so I pootled off to check my email (the one I was dreading and had spent the day avoiding wasn't there…) but my editor was moaning that I couldn't do the impossible for him (fine, you go do it) and I made it back up the road in time for seven of us to head down to Portobello beach, pick up Mo, get on to the sand and light a fire.

I've just had the most wonderful evening. For a day that started and passed in miserable anticipation, it was glorious that it ended so well. Me, Seth, Lara, Graham, Eireann, Sharon, Alex and Mo ate, drank, talked nonsense, took ninja pictures, made sandy pigs nipples, watched geese honk their happy way overhead and watched the tide come in, change its mind and go all the way back out again.

Some time after Mo left (well after 1am), we saw an illumination flare and, calling the coastguard, discovered they were already out looking for a lost boat. After that, I lay on my blanket and dozed by the fire, hearing intermittent bits of conversation and occasionally just watching the embers flicker and dance to their own orange-blue tune. For quite a while, there was no grief in my head and lying on cool sand, warmed by the fire and listening to the tide sneaking in, it just wasn't possible to be angry or disappointed or harangued or pressured, and that felt really good.

The sun set, the sky went midnight blue for a little while, then it all started to get light again and as we drove away at half past three, the sea was just turning a deep greeny blue, and it was hard to tell where sea stopped and sky started.

We drove up Arthur's Seat, just to see the clouds turn a little pink and the sky get a notch bluer. The city was quiet, the air still warm and entire committee meetings of seagulls were colluding on lawns and Lara said it was so they could learn the new day's dance steps :)

The longest day became a fun evening, a languid night and a peaceful dawn, and I'm not sure I can or want to ask for more than that.

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Sunday

What an odd weekend. I spent the week being resentful of having to attend the Art School show on Friday evening, when in fact I was just resentful of being committed to attending. What a freak. Someone please smack me upside the head (whatever that means) the next time I complain about men being commitment-phobic.

The show, however, did little to make me glad I'd attended. I'm not sure how loud you can say this, or how often, until the truly talentless admit defeat and go work for McDonalds, but bland is not ironic, it's just bland. Rubbish all piled up is still just a pile of rubbish, and worse than that, would someone please tell the Situationists that without humour, they are no more than failed wannabe drama students.

That aside, to rescue my mood, I saw a a great architectural remodelling of the concrete abortion that is Appleton Tower, some truly beautiful woodcuts and some limpets that were lit up. I don't know how. Maybe they'd just had great sex.

Afterwards, Ruth and I went to Ecco Vino where we drank Prosecco and Pinot, and ate fantastic fritatta and spiced, yummy salad. My mood improved to the point where I was willing to be outside the house on a Friday night. I went to K Jackson's, got slightly more inebriated and then went dancing. Can there be any sight sadder or funnier than a 35 year old heffer flinging herself about in an unduly enthusiastic manner to 'Footloose'? I fear not. Still, I was in that happy drunk state where I could still walk without crashing into things, and could dance with my eyes shut without falling over, but still felt wrapped in bubble wrap and rather happy in my soul. At least drunk enough not to feel fat, clumsy, undesirable and stupid, which is always a bonus. Thank all the Gods for vodka.

Not sure if it was the booze or the hippo-tranquilising meds for my hayfever (it says non-drowsy, and they're right - but had it said 'non-comatose' I would have had to have a wee word with Trades Descriptions...), but most of Saturday slipped by in a dozy haze. Every time I sat down I slept, so I didn't make it out the house until around 4.30, and even then made the walking dead look agile. First to Filmhouse to do a little work (and when I say little...) and then back to K Jackson's, but not until after I'd been to see SPIDER FOREST which was playing as part of the touring Korean Film Festival. Beautiful movie. People died, they were miserable, heart-broken and damned. Such things often settle my mood.

I made it home, pie in hand, around 1-ish (I think) and conked out, full of redundant, restless anger (for reasons I still haven't fathomed) and had horrible dreams. Again. Every couple of months I seem to spend a couple of weeks being afraid to go to sleep they get so threatening, and this is just the fallout from the most recent episode. I get to scare myself, hate myself, threaten myself, then sit bolt upright and awake, fizzing, until I either pass out or get fractured and frightening sleep. I hate it. What do you do? As a teenager I used to smash my face off the wall until I was properly distracted by real pain instead of the weird shit my subconscious used to dredge up, but the braincells I have left know this is stupid. When I couldn't explain the bruises away any more (my mother was convinced some random boy was hitting me, and the truth seemed even more embarrassing) I used to walk around Glasgow all night, because eventually it would alleviate whatever was going on in the murky smelly stagnant bits of my brain.

Last night, as with so many other nights, I woke up retching. Now there's an attractive image. You fancy me or what? Stressed, exhausted and just fucked off with not being able to shift the mood, I re-read some writing I'm trying to do, decided I was talentless and spent the longest hours of the night wallowing in self-pity, which started to feel ridiculous and over-indulgent by 5 this morning when I finally crashed. I seem to be having adolescence all over again. Lovely.

Still, today is Sunday, and it was a day for me. Still is :) I got up late, late late and made a yummy and healthy lunch. I went for a walk, browsed in Fopp (oh god the money I could spend in there!) then had coffee at Rocco's place on the Mile, watched the world go by, read my book, then transferred to Maxie's and sat on the terrace above Victoria St and read some more. The building opposite their terrace, on the roof, used to have a small glass and wrought iron conservatory that was full of plants with one large reclining chair in the middle. I have long been envious of the owner of that space. How glorious to be in total isolation in the city, on the roof, just the sky to distract you, surrounded by green. Bring a book and a glass of the good stuff, and what more could you want? If the world won't fuck off, then create somewhere where you can fuck off from the world.

It's not there any more. I guess they moved. But what kind of philistine would take it down??

I drank good Sauvignon Blanc, and tried not to hear the minging whores of hen parties screech their ugly way to and from the Grassmarket, on the rare occasion they set blistered foot outside their pink stretch hearses. You can only hope they all die. In pain. Alone. I suppose it's too much to expect them to do it quietly.

I'm reading Lanark at the moment, and although it's shameful I haven't read it before now, I am adoring it. Spending time in Thaw's morose, self-obsessed company this weekend has at last allowed a degree of transference to take place, and I can feel the mood settling.

It's muggy and weird outside, so I am going to go find somewhere else to sit and read, and maybe just maybe, top up the good Sauvignon I had earlier.

Best thing today so far was a huge banner hanging outside Deacon's Close on the Mile. It read "Clairvoyant Gathering". HAHAHAHAHAHA
So why make the banner? These people aren't medium's, they're below-average's if they need the banner. Losers. A bunch of potato-faced wimmin in velour that's only missing the storm pegs, muttering on about your future all the while wondering what happened to theirs.

And on that bilious note, my lovelies, I take my leave of you.