Best plan here is probably just to list. List and boggle. Boggley list.

• Friday night: fluffymark comes round for dinner, and I find him outside the building watching the heron fly off down the Creek towards Lewisham. We watch 'Once More With Feeling' while cheddar and rosemary bread finishes baking, and I feed him that and soup and apple crumble.
• Saturday: Go to King's Cross via Rotherhithe, where there is a Norwegian Christmas Fair at the Norwegian Church. Drink gløgg and eat hot dogs, resist urge to buy magnetic nisser, easily resist brown cheese, am unable to resist marzipan pigs and fluffymark buys me a great big one in a box, because he is lovely. Everyone there except us appears to be speaking Norwegian and all the ladies are wearing beautiful Norwegian embroidered dresses so it feels a bit like actually being in Norway. A bit. Sort of.
• Get to King's Cross, which apparently has loos which are gents/daleks, though they are cruelly down some stairs. We set off on the fast train to Cambridge - yeh! trip out of London - though we are actually going one stop further, to Ely. I have never been to Ely before. Adventure! En route we plan What To Do In Reykjavík (now that Iceland Express have nicked our first evening off us) and practise counting to ten in Icelandic.
• Are met off train by fluffymark 's friend Damian who tells us All About Ely, which we discover really is called that because it is Eel-y ie full of eels. Look, there is a baby eel in the pavement! There is also a giant staue of an eel, but we do not see this. We do see giant geese with big red noses and what looks like the Great Ouse's plug.
• Then to Ely Cathedral, which we thought would be a pleasant stroll around what Cromwell left of the architecture, but we find the Archbishop of York is visiting. This doesn't stop our stroll, but it does mean that it is punctuated by puppets miming along to 'It's Raining Men' (the words had been changed - "God sent Christ to sa-ave us" - but it was still deeply incongruous), a 'Time Traveller Zone' which to fluffymark 's delight had a tiny TARDIS and a cardboard cut-out of David Tennant I nearly had to prise him off, and the Archbishop himself, first giving a sermon and then playing the bongos. Even without knowing who he was, a large man in a purple dress enthusiastically playing the bongos is an arresting vision.
• Thence to Damian's flat where we ate, drank and read out the scripts of 'The Importance of Being Earnest' and 'The Life of Brian'. I was Cecily and Judith respectively and enjoyed it immensely. strongtrousers was a wonderfully resonant Lady Bracknell, with a headscarf to hide his sideburns and a fetching navy blue dress and pink jacket combination, and I enjoyed that immensely too. I also enjoyed a Victorian dictionary of interesting sexual practices. I do like a day to be educational.
• Sunday was the Cumberland Lawn Frisbee Tree Golf Club Autumn Aubergine Tournament. fluffymark had his own frisbee with him - I do like a man with his own frisbee. En route it rained so heavily it was as if the bus was in a car wash, giving Elly mild hysterics. (Her composure hadn't been helped by the scary Japanese couple sitting next to her earlier, who shifted from that to terrifying when Japanese boy, standing behind the girl sitting next to Elly, got some sort of sweet and shoved it in her mute, passive mouth, where it hung for a while before she actually swallowed it.) Naturally the match went ahead, adverse conditions bringing out a Blitz spirit in the Club members in my opinion. And the sun came out as we started play. Fairy cakes as well as fruit were passed about, but victory and the Ladies' Aubergine was snatched from me by one point. Elly tried to commiserate with me by telling me I could just buy an aubergine. "But it won't taste of victory!" I wailed. Who, me, overly competitive? Luckily I was able to console myself with hot chocolate orange in The Edinboro Castle (chocolate, cointreau and kahlua with cream and marshmallows on top). Another one of my friends' friends already knowsfluffymark through completely separate friends. But of course.
• Back not quite in time to get ready for gig that evening, with even less time after I'd discovered that my dress had washing machine-related splodges on it and I then spilt cheek stain down my favourite top that I was going to wear instead. Actually screamed when that happened and had to be coached to breathe properly again. Literally everything half-decent I own was in the wash. Rock up in Hoxton mildly hysterical as a result, then very hysterical in a better way when realise am attending a jazz gig actually wearing a beret and a black polo neck jumper. It was Rebecca Martin, who is marvellous, accompanied by musicians including Django Bates on piano, hence my presence, since he'd emailed me twice saying, "You might like her, you know". I did like her, you know. We perched ourselves, fluffymark and I, on an amp box in the corner which gave us a table for the wine and a fine view, not just of the stage but also of Key People To Avoid. Ah yes, for guess who else was there? And that wasn't weird at all, oh no. Django smiled and waved hello, but the presence of others meant I chickened out of going up and speaking to him properly in the break. Music was superb, although no-one had bothered to do anything with lights by the look / not look of the thing, Rebecca Martin being in semi-darkness for most of the gig, but sounding fabulous so what did it matter? A couple of standards (Lush Life in particular) were beautifully, delicately done as well as her own songs being really very good indeed. Combination extra cowardice added to usual rubbishness and a swift exit before becoming tired and emotional on the 47 bus back to Deptford.

And now I have a lot of housework to catch up on. Pesky real life.

Once again it's that time of year where people of my internet acquaintance (which these days is to say very nearly everybody I know) starts chattering about 'NaNoWriMo'. It's a concept which horrifies and puzzles me in equal measure. I may have it wrong, as I really can't be bothered to look it up properly (I may be lazy but at least I'm honest), but as far as I can tell it's an internet-based challenge to write an novel in a month. A novel. In a month. For fun.

It's a concept which puzzles me and horrifies me because, for as long as I can remember, I have found writing agonisingly painful. It might - scratch, I know it does - sound hideously pretentious, but forcing me to write in a particular time-frame of someone else's choosing what in school was called 'creative writing' (and probably still is) was my idea of gibbering Hell. I'm not entirely sure what it was about writing that I found so very agonising. Certainly I felt self-conscious, that must have been part of it, and back in those days, before I'd had bits of me pulled through the mud of various public humiliations and lived to tell the tale, back when it was all just a vague sense of over-exposure and a wish to hide somewhere safe, it must have been so very much worse.

I was down in Helston one Flora Day just three years ago, I think it was, and I met up with Jo, who I was at junior school with, and who was back from Australia for Flora Day for the first time in many years. She told me how she always remembered Mrs Collinge, the headmistress, coming into our classroom in order to announce to everyone that I was a very good writer, or something like that, and that I ought to be really proud of myself. Now memory is a funny thing. There are some things I can remember every tiny detail of which Cornish friends of mine have quite forgotten, and there are some things I have only remembered at the exact same time as seeing them again - a most peculiar sensation. But this didn't cause even the slightest flicker. I could not remember it at all. "How is is that that's a story that makes me look good and you can remember it and I can't? Are you sure?" And she insisted it had happened and was backed up by Rebecca. I must have been so traumatised that I had completely blanked it from my memory and even now it's gone for all time, double wiped from my mind. It's a wonder I even managed to pick up a pen again after, but then I had to, didn't I? I was at school, and they made you write stuff.

I remember the creeping horror of Sunday nights and the doom-laden hymns of 'Songs of Praise' as I ran out of time to procrastinate in, but even before then, when the homework was set, I remember feeling nothing but dread misery as our task was explained to us. I can't remember anything much about the sort of things we were asked to write, so I don't think the subject matter was ever the problem. The only one I remember with any clarity was a piece about a fire, which I decided to give a finishing touch to and singed all the edges in the gas fire, a flourish rather overly dramatic even for me. I remember having to write about the adventures of a coin. I do remember that the more open the brief the more my panic, the more freedom we were allowed the more exposed and vulnerable I would feel. I would practically develop shortness of breath and feel dizzy so horrified was I by the huge hole yawning in front of me, I would sweat and feel sick.

Oddly, nowadays I long for the time in which to write. I come to close to crying with frustration that I never seem to have the time to write or practise music and I miss the job I had which allowed me to blog every day very much indeed (had I stayed in the job, before you say, it would have been the same situation, as a department which used to employ about 3 people including me now employs about 60 and I imagine there is rather more to do). But still not novels, not 'creative writing'. maybe one day, if I was ever fortunate to find myself with endless beautiful precious time on my hands, but I expect I would still procrastinate away. It would take the deadline from hell, the threat of terrible punishment, someone handing down to me an assignment to be done by next Monday or else and me sweating and my ears buzzing with the high-pitched sound of impending unconsciousness for me to write a word...

Thinking about it, maybe NaNoWriMo does make sense.

I'm still not doing it, though.

What I especially like about this photo, taken by Rob Brennan at the last tube walk (Gants Hill to Newbury Park - pretty!  Autumn leaves! Conch shells embedded in bridges! Jetsons-style space bus station with original 'Festival of Britain' award plaque! cornflowers!, wishing well! (which turned out to be little more than a bucket, but I enjoyed fluffymark getting excited when he saw it), is that I 'm pretty sure what was being discussed at the time was Pooh Sticks.  I like any group of people who, like me, have as their first thought when finding a bridge over a stream, "Pooh sticks!" :)  (Spot the toriar  and the fluffymark )

How many boyfriends a) make note of which phase of the moon coincides with, erm, girl stuff and b) bring, at that point in the lunar calendar, offerings of medicinal Mars bars in order to sort out wonky blood sugar?

I think this astonishingly miraculous.

The only down side is it does show that he is better at being a girl than I am.  (I write it on the calendar.  And frequently forget to stock up with painkillers. Girl fail.) 

With no idea yet as to order, we vaguely think we will have days like this:

Reykjavík - museums and galleries and more museums and oooh look we are in Iceland look at everything being Icelandic!  Possibly iceskating on Lake Tjörnin.

Reykjavík - bit more Reykjavík.  Blue Lagoon and showering with naked Icelanders.

Þingvellir, Gullfoss, Geysir - mountains, waterfalls, geysers, elves.

Hveragerði (Hurdygurdy) - cucumbers, ancient lava tubes full of icicles, geothermal vents. Vík - jet black beach, puffins.  Might take turrety bucket in order to build goth sandcastle of doom.  

Hafnarfjörður (Heffalumper) - elves (might take elf-catching net), Christmas Village, singing Viking waiters. 

Mýrdalsjökull - glacier covered in SNOW.  Possible skidoo/snowmobile thing, driven by fluffymark with me clinging to his back as I do not have a driving licence.  Possible gruesome shared death.* 

I am so excited I might be sick.  Everything is booked so all we have to worry about now is the fight over the window seat.  :)

* fluffymark 's friend Susannah thought that sounded "so romantic" when I told her.  "Goths!" said fluffymark .

Party last night at the house of fluffymark 's excellent friend Marcus, who I like muchly.  Revealed to fluffymark that my parents are thinking (Grandad's health / general trauma over where he's living allowing) of coming down to see me next month, and so possiby, maybe, if he wanted, would he fancy meeting them? Eeek.  I haven't introduced a boyfriend to my parents since I was 16.  Decided it would be best to brief him, being as my parents are deeply different to the parents of most people my age.  

"They are very old-fashioned.  Not, like, horrible and mean and used to lock me in a cellar old-fashioned, just genuinely they actually still live in the 1950s old-fashioned.  So it would just sort of be impolite to talk about, say, you coming over to see me on a Friday and still being in my flat on Sunday... Just avoid stuff like that."

"What should I say?"

"I don't know!"

"Hello, I am violating your first-born."

*collapses with corset-induced asphyxia* "GODS NO!"

"Cambridge, Cambridge, PhD?"

"Better, yes, that.  And don't wear that blouse." 

Dear The Universe,

How the buggering fuck does Mr Hosking* know Michael Legge?

* 3rd year junior school teacher.  As if him adding me on Facebook wasn't mental enough,

Dear All

I have many things to write about, and shamefully many will never be written, because even if I find the time I will have forgotten what happened.  I do intend writing about my lovely stay in Scotland, but for the meanwhile I feel a moment must be taken for a 'story so far'. ("Confused? You will be!" - Ah, one day I will actually meet someone else who remembers 'Soap'...)

So, yes, there have been some rather major life-changes for someone as firmly alone and singular as I, best summed up by the fact that since the first day of August there have been two toothbrushes on my bathroom window sill.   

Coming back from Pestival, ran into Naomi, lovely girl I shamefully don't see very often.  Explain afterwards tofluffymark that she is an actress friend.  "I guessed," he says.  "Was it when I asked her about The Vagina Monologues, or did you get it at our first screams?"  "I think it was the screaming."

fluffymark came with me to the Vortex on Sunday.  He’d been making noises about wanting to hear me sing for quite a while, and I had found myself promising to tell when I’d next be, so I kept to that and told him.  It didn’t seem like too much of a big deal at the time; after all, my confidence levels are enormously higher than they used to be after telling everyone about the little three song set I did at the Vortex in February (with Janna, Elly and shewho actually turning up), then drunkenly and daftly singing deliberately badly at catbo ’s birthday in front of a roomful of people whose opinions I care about, most of all for God’s sake martylog (after Pestival on Saturday I am even more convinced that he is an musical genius - "I love him" I said out loud, as he bellowed out the flea national anthem of a dog).  I felt fucking invincible after the 100 Club daftness.   It was bad and I hadn’t been breathing properly, as evidenced by being unable to breathe in at one point, but that wasn’t the point.  So I ought to have been OK, yes? 

Only I hadn’t thought about the fact that I hadn’t sung properly in public since about June, or was it May?  Hadn’t sung at all in public since the 100 Club.  fluffymark had never heard me sing a note (unless you count the hymns at pennynya and Nathan’s wedding).  And I’d forgotten just how stupidly much it all means to me.  One slightly missed cue, one line not delivered with quite the verve I’d intended, one misjudged bit of improvising and I’m questioning my entire existence, beating myself up for not having a proper job, crying over the fact that I didn’t sing at all in public from 1985 to 2002 and thus I am fooling myself stupidly that I could ever compete with people who didn’t have to spend the best years of their life essentially in hiding thanks to a) the purdah that was my Midlands existence and the after-effects thereof.  Argh argh argh the Pandora’s box that one bum note can open. 

So even though I sang a song I know inside out and back to front my hands were shaking like a leaf as I gave the music out to the band.  I guess on the whole it didn’t sound too bad (though a lot of that was down to the sound being about the best I’ve heard it on an open mic night.  Being able to hear yourself perfectly makes all the difference in the world).  But I did come in far too late at one point, which is inexcusable IMO.  I was so nervous, or perhaps just out of practice from singing with a band, that I just failed to connect with the band.  The best nights at the Vortex have always been when I’ve really paid attention to what Bob’s doing with the piano and there’s been a bit of give and take, with what he’s doing influencing me and what I’m doing influencing him.  It’s like flying when that works and it’s the best thing in the world.  It wasn’t like that at all on Sunday, I was just trying to keep it together and not cry I was so bloody nervous.  Argh. 

Still, despite me wanting to throw myself out of the windows thanks to my amateur no clue what I’m doing so-called performance, it was still a good night.  Bob had greeted me at the door with a kiss on both cheeks, the man on the door was really pleased to see me back, there were hugs from Cheryl (the drummer) and Romy (who runs the night and is lovely) was really sweet.  And fluffymark said he liked it and was very sweet and poured me a glass of red after.  Cheryl sang and one of the singers, Annie, drummed for her and later on that night a table was wisely pushed out of the way as a couple, aged at least 70 the pair of them, danced enthusiastically at the front.  Fun was had.  People were supportive and kind.  Love was in the room. 

At the end of the nightfluffymark and I skipped down the stairs and out into the night, crashing through and atomising the ghosts that haunt there. 

Sneakily pinched from the official photographer, I like this photo from pennynya and Nathan's wedding:



(pretending to be a grown-up and pretending to be posh. tee hee)

Quick post:

Went to see The Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra and This Ambitious Orchestra at the Luminaire and on top of seeing someone there I haven't seen since he pretty much carried me to Dalston Junction from the Vortex (I considered saying hello and decided against - I expect / hope he's forgotten, though he was tremendously kind at the time), fluffymark was waiting for me outside with a hug and a tale.  He was still reeling from having met his bestest friend from school who he hadn't seen in about five years - extra weird as school was in Lancaster and he hadn't even known the friend was in London.  And why was his friend at the gig?  Because his sister plays flute in The Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra.  And again please - 20 musicians in the whole of London, tops, all of whom...well.   And all my friends already know each other.

Proof I will do anything for attention a laugh.  Dan Antopolski's Sandwich Rap video is now out.  I am in the office sequence.


See?  That's me right there, never taking my eyes off the camera lens despite having been elbowed in the left boob by Dan and whacking my right arm on a huge blown-up photo of Frank Skinner.  I suffer for my free sandwiches art!

Talking to Isabelle the other night, I summed up my current meagre 'blog' output as entirely consisting of: "ARGH I am not over ***** and I HATE WOMEN'S SHOES!!"  Utter bilge it's been.  Sorry. 

It is making me worry about my character.  The main reason for lack of proper bloggage is that my new job, although lovely with lovely people, is giving me Actual Work to do (le shock!) and I sit very close to a.n.other person, which makes me all self-conscious about the contents of my screen.  In my blogging heyday (which doesn't mean it was aces, just that it was the high point for my blog - I make no claim that that was ever especially high) I had an office all to myself and bog all to do all day - heaven.  Ho hum.  However, what is really worrying me is that when I do feel sufficient motivation to find time to type something, it's always negative.  I've had some lovely experiences in the last few months, all of which have spurred me to write little Twitters about how lucky I am to know such lovely people, but I've needed grumpiness and anguish to motivate me to type more than 140 characters.  Argh.  I once left an internet forum because even those not joining in with the nastiness would be cheering, "Fight! Fight!" from the sidelines and I worried about the effect it was having on me.  (That and I didn't want to hang about with a bunch of nasty people, obviously.)  Maybe I was already horrible.  :(

I suppose you don't feel the need for a sympathetic ear when you're happy.

Or I am a grumpy bitch. 

Hurrah!  After 24 years, my parents have now paid off the mortgage on their first ever house and own their own home!

I suggested to mum that she ask the next-door neighbours round to celebrate.

"No," said Mum, "I shall wait by the window, and when they set foot on the drive, I'll shout at them like Mr Trebus - GET OFF MY PROPERTY!!"

I love my mum. :D

Hello.  On the one hand, I had a lovely weekend.  On the other hand, I rather ballsed up my weekend.  Here is my workings in the margin:

( weekend )

So...I would have blogged this as soon as I got home, but I was worried it would annoy certain elements.  But it got a laugh last night, so I present the edited version I gave then:

I am in a part of London I have need and reason to be in, but which for a while now I have been avoiding when I can so as to avoid certain people, well one certain person to be exact.  And I find myself, quite through accident and bad sense of direction, across the road from a particular pub.  This pub is the epicentre of Places I Try to Avoid Nowadays.  It is the throbbing heart of operations, the vampire's nest, the castle lair... *ahurghcough*  "Oh fuck", think I, the sight of the place in daylight filling me with such horror it almost seems to throb gently.  I attempt the technique much employed in university of trying to disappear inside my clothes (actually quite easy in the early 90s, much less so now) and look at the pavement.

And then I have a Stern Word with myself.

"Victoria," I say, for that's what I get called when I get told off, "Victoria, this way madness lies.  You will be actually, properly, tinfoil hat-wearing, clinically-diagnosably paranoid if this keeps on.  You have every right to walk along the street.  You have every right to be here.  They don't own the bleeding pub.  They don't own this part of London.  London is huge, even this bit of it is huge, with hundreds of people.  You've only ever bumped into -------- ----- once even though you're in Deptford all the time, for ages, because you live there too, so the chances of you bumping into musicians who you barely know and who probably wouldn't recognise you these days anyway are a flat zero.  Besides, it's still broad daylight.*"

So I put my shoulders back, stood not tall but my full 5 foot 2 and  half inches, looked up and saw David Barnett, Rory and the rest of the Sex Tourists cross the road in front of me. (Hello.)

Burst out laughing.  Exit pursued by bear etc. 

* I might here have been muddling musicians up with vampires.

hello there.

I have been quite astoundingly rubbish lately, even by my low standards.  In a nutshell, I have been deep involved with a vicious circle of not getting anything done and then beating myself for not getting anything done instead of doing it. 

Been meaning to blog properly since...February?  When was it Sadie and her family came down?  It was nice.  We went to see the dinosaurs and to the Science Museum, where Sadie got her daughter a green unbreakable bubble off a man blowing green unbreakable bubbles and I walked around with it on my hand till we found her.  Sadie reckoned men were eyeing me up, I reckoned everyone, male and female, was just staring at the pustule on my hand.  I squeezed it gently to make it throb menacingly and wailed, "IT'S A DISEASE!" to prove the point.   Sadie told me that I'd "done well" to put up with offspring (both hers and a friend's) all day, which annoyed me slightly, as I thought they were excellent and the one person who annoyed me was actually one of the parents (queuing for coffee, after hearing moans about washing powder, choir leaders, cakes, biscuits and finally the poor choice of decaff, I started to feel as if my right eye was trying to squeeze itself out of its socket and had to think very hard about Miles Davis in order to achieve calm).  I suppose, to be fair, people with kids assume people without them wouldn't really want to put up with them not because they assume all people without children hate them (I may be hypersensitive to that, those from the Lush forum will understand) but because they have to put up with them all the time and I only get them in small doses.  But how can you not love someone who is genuinely thrilled by pushing buttons that light up?  And the kids enjoyed that too, as well as the husbands.  Ba-doom-tish etc.   At the end of the day Sadie and husband (the mysterious H of her blogs) took me for pizza, which was lovely (as was the waiter, who patiently took down toddler daughter's order: "ICE CREAM!" "And what would madam like to drink?"  "ICE CREAM!" "And for dessert, I imagine...?" "ICE CREAM!"), and we walked back along Whitehall, with their elder daughter stubbornly refusing to be impressed by anything whatsoever at all ever no and me going along with it.  "That is where the Prime Minister lives," her parents told her when we go to the gates of Downing Street (it used to be a regular street till the IRA got a bit scary, and I doubt they'll be taken down now a new generation are making the IRA look positively genteel, with their phoned warnings and all.  Ah, doesn't it make you nostalgic for the old days and the way terrorists used to bomb things?).  "Huh, he's not important.  If he died, we'd just get another one."  "Yes, prime ministers are very like hamsters in that regard,"* I nodded, refusing to take the bait.  Besides, it was an important point on a  fundamental principle of democratic government.  Sort of.  Then we got to Westminster tube, and I got hugged goodbye, toddler flinging herself at my knees as soon as she heard the word 'hug'.  I went home with hugged knees.  It was lovely. 

Anyhow...hang on, I really ought to split this up into separate blogs. 

* This is actually NOT TRUE, as I do not feel like this about hamsters at all, but I will lie outright if I think it's funny.  Do bear in mind at all times when reading any of my blogs. This has been a public service announcement.  As you were.

I love it when I see from my kitchen window adults pointing out the boats to accompanying children.  "Look, boats!" 

I love it even more because I think the child is just an excuse to say it out loud.

"Look, boats!"

I just got my first Japanese spam.  Except the first one was in English.  But, you know.   How weird?  It doesn't have any links in it, so I'm more than a bit baffled as to why.  Oh well.  I feel slightly sullied now.  At least I'm not left out.