Feedback Friday :: Foibles

bulk :: 13st 10 (eek!)
exercise :: very, very little
sexual congress :: nada
onanism :: fair bit
writing :: lots
cartography :: zilch
floccinaucinihilipilification :: some, but probably mostly useless
optimism (moneywise) :: moderate
optimism (fleshwise) :: moderate
marks out of ten for week :: 7

Right, I’ve got very little time before my internet is switched off for the weekend, and actually very little to say. What the hell is all this one post a week malarkey all about anyway? Well, it’s because I’m trying to write something. A book. Takes bloody ages.

So what can I tell you? Well, Ben and I got substantially lubricated on Wednesday night. Not in a sexual way, you understand. Not with love-lube and man-sweat and dirty great gobs of gay spit. No. But with red wine. Not red wine rubbed into our chest hair and thighs, then licked off of our taut nipples and springy, carrot sticks, you understand. No. Just in our mouths. And swallowed. Like two perfectly non-sexual, house-sharing, red wine-drinking men.

Then we had sex.

No, just kidding.

Ben told me some amusing things about himself though, which I shall share with you in the name of light-hearted betrayal. They go like this:

1) When he was fifteen, he was caught by a friend’s mum in the act of kissing a mannequin. (His friend’s father meanwhile, may or may not have been one of the architects of the modern landmine. Life, eh?)

2) Whenever Ben is in a pub or restaurant eating or drinking with other people, he has this neurotic inability to put anything in his mouth at the same time as anyone else. So, if he notices, for example, that I pick up my glass of red wine at exactly the same time as him, he will hold his for a moment without drinking. Once he’s seen that I have drunk from my glass, he will be able to follow suit, but not until. I asked him, ‘What happens if we drink at the same time?’ He just shook his head gravely and said, ‘It’s not good.’ Bloody weirdo.

3) Furthermore, he is unable to urinate onto another man’s urine. So if, for example, I refuse to flush the chain because it seems unnecessary after an alcohol-weakened half-piss and because I want to save the planet, Ben will always flush before passing his own pee-pee.

These things strike me as very odd. Except for perhaps the mannequin-kissing. I would certainly have done that if there’d been a mannequin knocking about in my youth. Instead I had to practise on the cat.

Do you have any super-strange completely irrational habits which you'd like to share with me? Aw, go on, I promise I won't tell anyone.

Right. I'd best get on.

Oh, and if you've never read James Joyce's saucy letters to his saucy brownarsed fuckbird Nora Barnacle, then you really ought. They're funny.

Have a super weekend.

Feedback Friday :: Nothing

bulk :: 13st 8
exercise :: none
even remotely sexual things :: none
back pain :: niggling, proscriptive
marks out of ten for the week :: 5

I’ve got nothing.

All week I’ve been writing this thing I’ve been writing. Trying to. And succeeding for the most part. Monday was a washout though. In the meantime I’ve bitten the bullet and sent out a couple of feelers for proper jobs. Nothing snapping my hand off as yet, but it’s the principle of the thing that’s a bit saddening. I don’t want to do that rubbish if I can help it. I know, I know. Boo hoo.

Seriously though, I’ve got nothing. I’m listening to Eartha Kitt (Ben loves Eartha), I’m using eBay for the first time to try and get myself a chair (back still fucked – next week professional help), my room stinks of abramelin (Crowley’s own concoction apparently, which contains menstrual blood – thanks, Frank), I’m trying to write this thing I’m trying to write and I’m gearing myself up for another weekend without the internet.

That’s it. Oh, and I found this in Ben’s room. Not that I was prying. Found it under his mattress. I can’t help feeling it’s slightly more disturbing than finding weird porn.



I didn't really find it under his mattress by the way - it was in between a couple of books. When I quizzed him about it, Ben said he used to want to be a knitting pattern model, like this guy.



Like that explains anything.

People eh? So, I'm off out in a moment to run some errands and then get uproariously drunk.

And you? What you up to this weekend? Anything OUTRAGEOUS? Tell me at once.

London Philharmonic :: A Fresh Start

Ben’s divorce came through last Saturday. There was a party at our house to celebrate. I live with Ben. And we both live with Imogen.

Both Ben and Imogen are musicians.

Imogen plays the oboe. No. The oboe she plays is not pink.

Ben plays the cello. Yes. Ben's cello is pink. Figuratively. Hence Ben’s divorce.

It’s a long story, and unfortunately not mine for the telling. It’s off limits. And rightly so. Because it has nothing to do with me. Sometimes though, even if something does have something to do with me, that doesn’t give me the right - certainly not if there are other people involved - to take this thing out and wash it, or dye it, in public, then leave it to slop around in the faceless, phlegmmy sea of eyes and ears that is the internet for all eternity. I know. I'm an idiot. I’ve said it many, many times before, but it bears repeating now.

Recently I fucked up a good thing by saying too much on this blog. I knew this person wasn’t comfortable with the whole Truman Show-lite, self-fellatio thing, but I thought I could make it work. I was wrong. I fucked up. And I gave myself a fucking egohernia in the process. The egohernia erupted spontaneously when this woman compared me to Liz Jones and I could see quite clearly that she had a point.

Well, I wish I could say I’ll never make the same mistake again, because it makes me proper sad, but in one way or another, I'm thinking I probably will. So I won’t say anything more. But I am sorry.

But then... I’ve just moved into a new house and some very interesting new people are suddenly knocking about the place and I want to talk about them. So what I did – I had a brainwave, and I thought, I’ll feel them out first. So that’s what I did. I felt them out.

Ben said that as long as I don’t use his real name, or the name of the real musical instrument he plays, or the fact that he has an alcohol problem, then we’ll be alright.

Imogen said I could only talk about her in rhyming couplets, but even then I wasn’t allowed to use her real name, her real instrument or say anything to bring shame on her or her family. Then I made her see that rhyming couplets were a very bad idea. And we talked about something else.

So. I feel like a student. Except I’m also the oldest person in the house, which is a little odd and makes me feel like an underachiever. Yes, a student. Imogen and Ben, and as far as I can tell, most of their friends, studied together. Or else they met on the circuit, or on big jobs. Now they gad about all over the world in vibrant little shifting clusters, playing whatever needs playing and having a whale of a time. (Tour Wives indeed.) Concerts. Film soundtracks. Weddings. Adverts. TV Shows. Rich People’s Parties. Royal Variety Performances. Band tours. You name it. Wherever there is need of string, reed or piston valve, these people fly off, play their pieces, drink very heavily and commit heinous immoral acts.

Here are some of them here:



They’re all top rank humans though, the ones that I’ve met so far at least, and what’s really funny is, although you’ll often find them denying it, they’re all terribly posh. I don’t say that in a disparaging way by the way. Posh in my books is Excellent. I love posh people. And mark my words, if I ever have offspring of my own, as opposed to someone else's, they’ll be posh offspring. Palpably posh. I’ll be shoe-horning them out of the womb with a silver spoon the size of a spade and they’ll be bashing notes before the cord is cut. And if they ever know the uniquely dispiriting sight of a Goblin Meat and Gravy Pudding spilling its unseemly guts across a plate of cold chips, I’ll work my balls off to ensure it’s merely in the name of play or posh gloating.

Speaking of play, two of Ben’s best friends are happy to label themselves ‘failed musicians’. Will is also happy to label himself ‘designer florist’. And Kingsley is perfectly content with ‘music teacher’ at a London comp. I met them both at Ben’s Divorce and Coming Out party. They’re both single. One very recently. Ben too now of course. Mum’s the word. And as for me, I’m up around the nine-month mark. It’s getting just like the old days. When I told them this, they were sympathetic, and drunken plans were immediately hatched to Do Something About It. In the meantime, apparently I have to watch some Sex and the City and figure out which one of us is Miranda.

In other news, I have recently mistreated my spine and now my spine is taking revenge. I currently have a cheap wooden chair tilted forward on two bricks and I’m pumped full of Nurofen. I think I’m going to watch a little more Larry Sanders now, then lie flat on the floor and listen to some Brahms. (Imogen is teaching me about classical music. I still prefer Michael Nyman at the moment, but wouldn't you simply die without Mahler?)

If anyone has any chair advice, by the way, I would be very grateful. My back is proper crippling me at the moment, worse than The Da Vinci Code, which I finished today. (Eminently readable. Hilarious. Inconceivable!) Balls. There must be a surfeit of decent office chairs in London at the moment, what with all the lay-offs and all. I might do some sniffing about.

Happy 9/15!

Happy Fat War (Xmas Is Over)

So that was Christmas. And what did I do? Well, I ate an enormous amount of predominantly rather unhealthy food. That’s what I did. I actually decided that I may as well eat as much as I possibly could before I start the diet. A proper blow-out. And in fact, according to my brand new Argos electronic scales, my body mass has grown to the tune of ten pounds. Baby Jesus, had he existed, would have been proud. He would also have been lunch. And it’s not over yet. I intend to continue to eat like a Shetland Pony with a tapeworm until January 1st, when I will quite suddenly revert to small portions of healthy food and large portions of exercise.

Believe it.

I had fun though this Christmas, despite not being able to smoke that much. There is no smoking in Patricia’s house. She is a born again non-smoker. As I shall also be in less than a week. Shit, three days in fact. God, that’s scary. Anyway, as well as copious amounts of food and a fair amount of alcohol, there was also fun and games and much hilarity with the kids, with whom I got on very well. Ben and Dina, 9 and 11. Our getting along famously came in very handy, allowing Keith and Patricia to nip off and canoodle, loudly, in the afternoons. Good luck to them I say, even when they’re banging, yelping and yodelling like not so lonely mountain sex goats all night long. Insensitive swine.

So I got back yesterday and just lay beached on my bed like the proverbial whale. I lay there reading my copy of Men’s Health, which Keith kindly stuffed into my Christmas stocking. Keith knows about my health kick. And he is the only one of my friends who knows about this blog. Although he has yet to visit. But that’s what friends are for.

Men’s Health is hilarious. I’ve never owned a copy before but I’ve chortled many times at the impossible boasts on every single front cover, month after month after month after month, year after year after year. This month for example: ‘Hard Abs Made Easy’, ‘365 Days Of Sex’ and ‘Fat To Flat In 7 Weeks’. But because this edition is the first of the year, it also has the irresistible header, ‘YOUR ESSENTIAL NEW YEAR WEIGHT-LOSS BIBLE!’

Bastards. They must sell more copies in January than in any other month. (Which reminds me, I must join a gym.)

I also spent a good portion of yesterday reading Bridget Jones’ Diary, the success of which I have decided to emulate.

More of which later. Now however, I must sleep. But I leave you with a quick, comforting Men’s Health fact:

‘Cabbage fights more cancer than 100 oncologists’.

Believe it.