This is getting a little ways from Heeland Lass's original point, which is simply that while we're struggling to break free from a pantomime of cliche, resentment sets in. The person you love most in the world starts to symbolise the very constraints we're fighting. Worse still, the relationship itself starts to take on an uncanny, frustrating resemblance to everything you promised yourself it wouldn't be. When it finally bubbles to the surface, not even the knowledge you are happier than you have ever been removes the stain of exasperation. And so, because I try to make light, the internal conflict turns into a raging fury that seeps into petty digs and snippy, pointed remarks and I hate it. The thing I hate most though is that my frustration is actually directed towards our flatmate and I've been projecting it onto Matthew. This doesn't excuse him from having to be badgered into vacuuming or doing the patty-heady thing, but it does relieve some of the irritation I seem to be throwing at him lately.

I think I've just managed to rile myself up even more and file half of it down. This is why sticking to entries of pointless origin is a good thing. Whatevs. Basically, now that I've analysed myself/this situation into the ground, never fear Heeland Lass. I think it's just a down spot rather than symptomatic of a deeper contention.

CHANGING THE SUBJECT: CLAP YOUR HANDS, SAY YEAH!

After finally remembering I had to be at the gig, I hightailed it after work down to Camden and stood in the most ineffectual queue I have ever been a part of. The bouncers at Koko clearly They seemed fairly subdued, not at all the pure jangle-fueled rush of energy I was expecting. It wasn't until the penultimate song that they really started to cut loose and groove to it. Keyboard Guy (can't remember his name) was brilliant though, brillianter than brilliant. Luminescent. He spent the entire gig flailing gleefully all over the stage and grinning like he couldn't pull his face into any other shape. The encore was FANFUCKINGTASTIC! That was when the rest of them became infused with Keyboard Guy's enthusiasm and the stage turned into a platform for shaking your awesomeness.

LASTLY AN OPEN LETTER TO PETER ANDRE

Dear Peter Andre,

Your overcut abs and blinding tan scare the crap out of me and can only have traumatising effects on the masses of children that watch CD:UK every Saturday morning. Put your shirt on.

****emmms

10.02.06..8:51 am

I've been convinced I'm doing something tonight all week without having a clue as to what it might be. One of those niggly little worms of a thought that burrows into your sinuses. Before you realise what it's saying you sneeze and it's gone. I've been sneezing a lot this week. By Wednesday night it had got to the point that I'd look at Matthew, a little furrow fretting in my brow, and automatically tell me, "I don't know." Last night, for the eightieth time, I went to ask if I was working Friday night; for the eightieth time one glance silenced me into knowing I'm not.

A funny thing these little worms. Because they don't just glimmer with a half-remembered thought, but fall like a shroud over any new incoming thoughts. New thoughts fade out with a low ping! as the last morsel disappears; the old one tiptoes in the shadows, but never lets more than a grain of it show. Cheshire Worms I can't catch. Burlesque Worms that hide behind ostrich plumes. They burrow and feed off the anxiety of not knowing what they mean, what they stand for. Slowly but surely you begin to think you must be going crazy. There's nothing on, you tell youself. You're not doing anything. You've made it up. But those worms keep tunneling. Brain Tremours waiting to pounce on unsuspecting wavelengths. Eventually you convince yourself of minor paranoia and become paranoid it's a sign of something more sinister.

When I opened my inbox this morning the sigh of relief hung in the air like a warm, daisy-lined fug. It's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! night. How could I forget that?! Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! Down at Koko! If you had told me six weeks ago when I begged my editor to be allowed to review this gig that I'd have no idea when it was, where it was, or that I was supposed to be there ON THE DAY OF THE GIG I'd have pronounced you crazy and set you to the crazy house. As it stands, I'll see you there.

****emmms

09.02.06..8:48 pm

TWO EXCUSES TO DRINK MORE WINE

1. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I seem to be one of the highest rated sites to visit for Japanese Yahoo regarding porn. "Gallant+Duck+porn"? "Duck+porn"? "Gallant+porn"?* Your guess is as good as mine, but to my dear Heeland Lass, I sympathise.

*Now there's a thought.. Sir Galahad getting jiggy with Guenever over the Round Table, yow!

2. I got asked today by a ten year old who thinks The Pussycat Dolls set an exemplary standard for high fashion why I don't have any normal clothes. If she means, why don't I wear skirts up my arse and stuff my bra, then I can see her point. That classification of 'normal clothing' does not enter the hemisphere of my wardrobe. If she wants to know why I follow some batshitty preconceived notion that scrappy jeans, argyle socks and a pair of hot pink Chuck Taylor high tops belongs to a superior the realm to humping a greasy A&R dude for the privilege of wearing a skirt up my arse and stuffing my bra and that it's no bad thing, I'm afraid I've got a long night ahead of me.

Incidently I pulled up Bulfinches Guide when looking up Sir Galahad's position at the Table. Sadly for them it wasn't under the search heading "Galahad+Guenevere+Hot Lovin+Round Table".

09.02.06..1:32 pm

Well I've sourced the mystery of why my flat is so goddamn freezing all the time: Sibylle keeps turning off the furnace. Just switching it off. We've got it on a timed rotation: it goes on at 8.30am til 11.30am, then comes off again at 6pm and goes off at 12am. We need this. The flat is a concrete box. It is not of a naturally heat-supporting construction. The heat doesn't so much escape as flee.

When I asked her about it she complained that her room is always boiling and she finds it hard to get up in the mornings because of it. Boiling? Is that possibile in the Arctic Hovel of Stoke Newington? My toes are falling off from frostbite, my nipples could cut diamonds, I permanently quake with the cold and you're complaining about being too hot? TAKE OFF SOME CLOTHES THEN! Sleep under a sheet instead of the mountain of quilts. Stop turning off the furnace. You may have a beautifully toasty room, I DO NOT!

This is awesome. I've written about it here and here.

Also, mimi smartypants made me laugh more than usual this morning. I wish she'd post more often. When she's hot, she burns.

****emmms

08.02.06..9:42 am

According to Google my other site is the number one source for salsify mash recipes.

Somewhere in the outer reaches of the universe my extradimensional other half is having her hair cut by a beachball and cursing my very foundations. For reasons unknownst to me the unthinkable happened: my post was delivered to me. My post! To me! IT'S MADNESS! The universe has clearly lost control, lobsters rule the earth, Mother of Idaho and hallellujah. I'm not sure how it happened, but yesterday morning at just gone 8am I awoke to a strange scratching sound at the door followed by a peculiar muffled thud. Sans spectacles I hurtled out of bed, thumbing frantically for something better than the sole sock I found in the middle of the floor to cover my modesty assuming (not unreasonably) that the front door had been left unlocked over night and we were being invaded by crappy-old-laptop loving hooligans. Gad! I thought suddenly remembering I'd left them on my desk, they could even chance my contact lenses! Because THAT is what crappy-old-laptop loving hooligans also seek when they break into other people's homes. Not the fistful of guitars that scatter the squash room, not the TV or the VCR, not the bike that takes up most of the hallway, not the mountains of precious first edition Ian Fleming's. The sacred contact lenses. To aid their all-seeing, yet rather short-sighted eyes, which are conveniently the same prescription as my own. Their ways are not of this world. Clearly.

But it wasn't a flock of hooligans. It was the postman.

The postman and I have a strange relationship. I see him frequently, he bears the bills and statements I could do without and the occasional letter, the STOOPID amount of yarn I purchased during Binge 2006. He's generally pretty good. Except when it comes to CDs. Those disappear. Without a trace. And as a music journalist who needs said CDs That Is Not Acceptable. Last year my August, September and October assignments got lost somewhere between my editor's house and mine. I started having them delivered to Matthew's office. However when Track and Field announced their January Buy 1, Get 1 Free offer, I yelled a big Fuck You to the balance on my credit card and rushed to place my order. As so it was I spend three weeks waiting for the music of The Loves, Herman Dune, Finishing School and The Singing Adams* to arrive at my door. It didn't come. I emailed Track and Field. They said they'd posted it. I got in touch with my local sorting office. They said if it had been sorted they'd have delivered it. I emailed Track and Field. Round and round we went until eventually I got pissed off, had some stern words with the Post Office, and emailed Track and Field again who went 'meh' and sent me new copies. For which I am very thankful, because my word they rock! Mr Adams outdoes himself with Problems, and I'd forgotten how much I love Sasha Bell's voice, she's so delicate and soft with the slightest edge of Don't Mess With Me Or I'll Write A Song Abut You, Asshole. It's delightful.

*The Loves are sadly no longer together, and Sasha Bell of Finishing School has no website that I can find, however she does have a nifty review stationed here.

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE ENTIRELY

If you live in the UK (much more so than in North America) you will likely have had to tolerate some kid sitting on the bus, jacking up the mp3s on his/her mobile and attempting to sing along, or else taking over the back of the bus with everyone they know screaming over the sound of eighteen versions of the latest R&B chart. And everyone else on the bus is their coming home from work and the last thing they want is to have to lay the slap down, so they all try to bury themselves in their collars, read a book, drown it out, but inside they're slowly seething because in Britain you just don't say anything and we're all dying inside because of it.

So when this scrawny kid wearing everything eight sizes too big for him gets on the night bus, phone blaring the idle musings of some talentless warbler and I was coming home after a night of sitting at the door taking money from people who are actually PAYING to listen to indie crap I responded in the usual way. I turned and with all the indie-girl anger I could muster glared pointedly at him. My raging enmity went unheeded, the daggers of animosity shooting from my eyes bounced harmlessly. He looked vaguely amused and turned up the sound. There was nothing else I could do.

Because T-mobile decreed it, I have two Tears For Fears tracks on my phone. Don't dig them myself, but there again I can't be arsed to figure out how to remove them. I don't need to listen to them, so their continued presence on my phone is not much of an issue. But they do have their uses. O yes. Much to R&B's #1 Fan's bemusement suddenly the tinny strains of Closest Thing to Heaven entered the ring, the innocuous spectacled girl reading Oliver Twist had joined in the fray.

He lastest two verses.

With any luck this will start some sort of urban legend, the threat of getting Tears for Fearsed will override the need to invade communal airwaves. On day I will make the best malevolent old lady.

****emmms

05.02.06..2:02 pm

Here be an old school friend. She was the first of my lot to break out, get married, have babies -- a daunting thought for we whose lives are borderline-stable at best, completely beyond comprehension at worst. I have no idea how she manages to find the time to blog so eloquently and manage the needs of two children at the same time. While I don't follow with much of what she believes, nor some of the ways in which she chooses to raise her children, I am and will always be in full support of her, and respect that these are HER choices. The path she's taken I find hard to reconcile with the vivacious girl I went to school with. She is one of the brightest people I have ever known -- both intellectually and in her general joie de vivre. She was always but ALWAYS top of the class; she's arty, creative and musical; she's travelled extensively; she has a degree in linguistics and German. From my position she could be doing so much more (academically speaking) yet, and this is a big YET, it remains her degree was one done with love and devotion rather than propelled by career options - and to my antiquated, romantic way of thinking, that is the best reason to study. (I'll grant you that I want to use my degrees as a career option, however I also recognise that I would have a far easier life if I'd chosen to study business or something that would leave me financially sound, but dead inside.)

This is a woman who is undoubtedly, unreservedly happy. She struggles like anyone else and adheres to a medium of respite more common than my own atheist approach. However, in my naivete I never saw her in terms of her beliefs, despite the fact they are entirely fundamental to her being. She was always simply she with whom I could fling myself into a storm of recipe-free cookie making, or sit on the edge of her bed making up songs, or discuss in earnest the wretched tragedy of The Dead Poets' Society. I basked in going over to her house. This huge, creaking Victorian affair with endless staircases, where you'd turn a corner and crash into one of her many sisters, where it was never silent, but filled with music and laughter; where animation itself found its roost.

I cried when she told me she was getting married - my throat gave out, my eyes poured, I shivered with pleasure for her. I ignored the gift list posted at the Bay. I couldn't stand the thought of giving someone I'd loved so much growing up a pizza cutter as a wedding present. I spent days trying to find a cookie book, something she would look at and suddenly remember the shower of flour and oatmeal that would take over her kitchen.

It wasn't until the wedding itself, however, that the two sides of her life collided before me with a deafening roar that redesigned the image I had of her. At her wedding, I was one of two 'non-church' friends invited. I took refuge with Judith (the other) and our dates (a friend of mine and her brother respectively), all the praying and outward pouring of religious fervour being completely alien to me. It unnerved me. It did NOT help that I was sitting next to a born-again, child-bride, daughter of an Alberta cattle rancher who clearly thought I was nucking futs for querying the stock content of the soup. ("It's only a little bacon, she won't even notice," was her oh so tolerant response.) I spent the entire night torn between wistful delight and wanting to hide from it all, while the bride how she glowed.

I'd never seen her so happy: she was radiant, in every respect. Every call for post-nuptial snogging (averaging at one every 2.1 minutes) was leapt upon with unheard of levels of excitement and glee. They'd fly to each other from wherever they were in the reception hall, throw themselves at each other to the stomping appreciation of their guests. She introduced her husband with eyes glittering, she practically quivered with rapture. Seeing them together made me yearn to achieve that kind of happiness.

I've not seen her since then, the last email I received from her was just after her firstborn entered the world, her blog was sent to me by a mutual friend. Though I am sad and disappointed we've lost contact, it's not altogether surprising. She's got rather a lot on, no? So I read her blog with relish. She's a beautiful writer; incredibly thoughtful with the old dry sense of humour bubbling mercilessly under the surface. With any luck she will read this and know how much I think of her.

****emmms