Monday, January 28, 2008

Reconstruction

Had a most pleasing weekend, with Monky coming to Lahndan Town to do lunch and exhibitionism (Seduced at the Barbican to be precise):

http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=5625

Our general attitude to sex is still so strange, even in a world where you can't walk 10 feet without having it waved about in front of your face (as it were), and both me and Monky found ourselves amused by the overly reverential tone of the Barbican masses. I'm sure a wind chime shaped like a knob with wings was intended to be funny after all ... surely.

We also marvelled at the rampant egotism of Jeff Coons, made up like a 14-year old with a foundation habit, shagging his faux porn-star wife and pulling all the nauseus fake ecstacy faces which apparently constitute good sex these days. Luckily this was neatly balanced by a beautiful set of photographic diaries by Nan Goldin, detailing the gentle chaos, intimacy and lack of egotism that form a truer passion and love. Playing out to an extended Bjork song (which I would dearly love to have - called something prayer???) it was enough to give Monky the sniffles, and make my heart glow and melt simultaneously. There was also a video (face and shoulders only) of a woman receiving oral sex, which I found much more .... searching for the word here ... entrancing than I thought possible.

I'm sure standard porn has some interest or use to people, but I've got to think that anyone dedicated to that plasticised and pumped up crap is missing a trick. Most of the exhibition was curious rather than the kind of stuff to make you want to run off and do anything wicked, but there were definitely a couple of installations that made me wish for something better in my own life. Me and Monky went for lunch afterwards and discussed the disappointment of being that kind of girl without that kind of man, how meeting nobody "like-minded" in such a long time turns you into an unrecognisable creature (the cynical hard-shelled kind) who on those seldom occasion where hope appears, finds themselves acting the opposite way to how they truly feel. Monky ordered a big pot of mussels, and I confronted my fear of the shell fish, and discovered - shock horror - that they're actually rather tasty. I then proceeded to steal as many as I could off her plate, which she endured with Monky-like poise.

I also went to see Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp and co. in, which was quite entertaining, though felt a bit too theatrical to be altogether my taste. Also Alan Rickman (who I feel torn over - deep voiced genius or creepy old man???) wore a pair of trousers that frankly gave me the heeby-jeebies. Me and Schwesty also discovered the most god-forsaken bus stop in London (and I've waited around in some veritable crap-holes in my life). Even though there were two of us, and we were later joined by some fairly harmless looking Chinese chaps, it felt as if we were in a Crimewatch reconstruction (imagine standing by the side of the IDR in the dark waiting to hitch a lift from a serial killer). It was a bus stop so terrible, I started to feel as if I wanted to take everybody I had ever known there, just to share in the experience of primal despair that it conjured in my mind. When the bus finally appeared things didn't really improve. We were sat behind a guy prattling away in another language (Turkish perhaps??) who you could just tell from his mannerisms was a wife-beating prick. He spent the whole time berating a very thin, meek looking blond with a baby, which finally ended in him throwing a bottle of juice over her (and anybody in the vicinity) just as we were stepping off the bus. We were both very glad that journey was over, and in that English sort of way, left her to her fate - grateful for not existing in that twilight London world where taking your baby for a ride on the bus at 11pm, with your scum bag boyfriend, is normal life.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Put a Hat on It


It seems that January is the cruellest month (not April, Mr Eliot) as misfortune follows misfortune , and we can all feel rightly anxious about what the new year will bring. Choc Chip has taken a physical and emotional tumble, Monky stays gorgeous but lonesome, and Withnail has fallen off his bike and busted his leg... and I just, well, worry about things and continue to sing to myself at work and on the street. I only hope all my friends and family find this year exceeds their lowly expectations. But just in case you too are feeling unable to crack a smile today, Monky kindly supplied me with the above pic, of a Reading FC fashion victim. Step forward Stephen Hunt. I had to do some "media training" on Friday, which involved being interviewed on camera, and then watching myself back. I cannot tell you how terrible and ugly and wrong I looked. But I still looked better than this. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. What an unmitigated but loveable twat this man is.




Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Back of my Mind

I am still alive. I'm just extremely rubbish at blogging ... even though I spend most of the time walking around to an inner narrative, which I have pretensions to being quite interesting! What I need is some wifi voice recognition software, so I can transfer all my random thoughts to the web without so much as a press of a button. And also for it to be socially acceptable to talk to myself without being deemed a nutter.

The one flaw would be that this would become the longest most rambling blog ever committed to webdom, and that people would discover the extend to which my mind is occupied by thoughts of Reading FC, and fantasies involving becoming a bohemian country wife / WAG / booker prize winning novelist combo. I am actually shaking my head as I write this, because that is quite BAD I know.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Getting in the Way of Control

A number of things have made me feel, in the last few days, as if I'm not entirely in control of life anymore. I have always been a grounded, level-headed sort of person, but my head is buzzing with a new insecurity about the future, and the anxiety transfers into the body and becomes a flutter in your stomach, a constant nag that follows you about like your own shadow. Tonight I'm going to visit my dad in hospital and tomorrow I'll take him home.

New Years resolution: to not let 2008 break me.