Thursday, November 30, 2006

I Remember The Good Old Days

I used to have a blog and write things on it. They might not have been good things, but they were certainly things and I certainly used to write them.

My observations since the last time I posted can be summarised thus:

  • Murder mystery weekends are Fun and Somewhat Messy. Also Expensive.

  • Daniel Craig is Dreamy.

  • Cinemas which do not supply chocolate raisins in their pick n mix sections are Fraudulent.
I am going to another BlogMeet on Saturday, which I am very excited about in a kind of "shit what am I going to wear and does it matter that I never seem to actually blog any more" sort of a way. My aim is to end up knowing more people from the Internet than people from Other Places, which, I suspect, is a very, very cool and hip aim.

On Sunday I am going to the wedding of Paul and Lidija. I do not know either of them, but I heard whispers that some Champagne will be in attendance so I am gracing them with my presence. Although I suspect they would prefer I graced them with my presents.

I am in the studio this week again. It is alternately cold and warm and wineful.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Day Of Fun

The Day Of Fun progressed almost exactly as I had hoped it would.

I met Dan at about two near to Oxford Circus, and together we walked to meet Luke in a pub in Soho. Because everyone knows that the point of Days Of Fun is going to the pub early and laughing at other people when they have to go back to work.

It was raining and cold, and I, of course, was wearing inappropriate shoes and not enough clothing. I was wearing some clothing (it wasn't that kind of a Day Of Fun) but just not the big hatscarfglovessensibleshoes that the warm-looking rest of the world had on. I also had a suitcase because I had just come from Eastbourne, too much lipstick because I got bored on the train and a pained expression. The pained expression was because by the time Dan met me on Argyll Street a man had set a rug down, donned a curly pink wig and a pair of flippers and started dancing to a tinny recording of Mambo Number 5 which was being blasted out of a stereo, for no apparent reason about a metre away from where I was standing. My pain was due simply to the fact that I really wanted to dance along, but my dignity prevented it. My dignity does not kick in very often so I do try to listen to it when it does. For nostalgia, if nothing else.

Dan, Luke and I went to the pub and drank some wine. Then, as I recall, we went to another pub and drank some wine. Then, and this was a bit of a curve ball, we trundled off to another pub and drank some beer (it was cheap). Then we ate.

By this time it was about seven in the evening. We had discussed our own lives, those of mutual friends and mutual enemies. We had speculated about the nationalities and sexualities of many of the London bartenders, talked briefly about politics, hair-styling choices, our jobs. Or lack thereof. I told them about my crazy week of negotiating with people who seem to want to make me into a popstar (my favourite bit: "please, do not mistake a pretty face for weakness.") (said, but maybe you got this, by me.) People who call me 'unmanageable' and 'stupid' because I have my own way of doing things. Luke told us about his current (and temporary) role as an estate agent and how one lady nearly brained him because her cat ran out between his legs when he opened the front door. As she stood there screaming bloody murder at him the cat meandered up and sat on the doorstep, idly licking its paws and looking up at him blankly for about five minutes as she continued. We had a great time. I had a great time, but all this drinking and talking doesn't really explain how I ended up on stage three hours later, doing sambuca shots and singing "Hey, Big Spender!" with a transvestite called Kimberley.

After we ate we decided to go to The Edge, four levels of gay-bar on Soho Square (although just the one of us is really gay, the other two of us were gay in the other way - high-spirited - so it counts). We found somewhere to sit on the fourth floor, and as we went in I noticed a small stage in the corner next to a big white grand piano. That stage, I thought to myself, has a microphone on it. Interesting.

About an hour and a few more cocktails later, out came Kimberley. Six foot something, wearing a black sparkly dress and four inch red patent heels, enormous hair and nails like surfboards, she teetered up to the microphone. In a faux-New York accent she introduced herself, and opened with a hearty rendition of "I Will Survive". In this vein she carried on, flirting with everyone in the bar, boys and girls ("did you know I'm secretly a lesbian?") and belting the hell out of every anthem she could, whilst a timid-looking man raced along with her on the white piano.

She left the stage ("a short break, my daaaaahlings") and ten minutes later staggered back on. Raising the mic high in one hand she careered back and forth, singing bits of songs and laughing raucously. By this time everyone in the room was laughing along with her, the alcohol was pouring out of the bar and people were dancing. Luke had gone to ctach his train and Dan was at the bar, pricing the sambuca. Two girls who had been flirting with some businessmen by the bar got up on the stage. Outrageously winking and shimmying they grabbed the microphone and began to shout the words to Big Spender down the microphone whilst gyrating together and looking meaningfully at the overweight and salivating businessman. Opposite me a man looked over in my direction and we rolled our eyes at each other in mutually exaggerated horror. As the caterwauling continued he looked over at me again. Then I realised he was mouthing something at me. "PLEASE" he was saying. "Please do something!" I looked at him and thought "Alright".

"Alright" I said, and walked over to the stage. I saw Dan at the bar looking over and laughing in an itwasonlyamatteroftime sort of a way, and stepped up onto the stage, was handed the microphone and finished the song. As the last few bars rolled around I glanced over at the grinning pianist and he started the song again. I cannot now recall exactly how many times I sang "Hey! Big! Spenduuuuuuuur!" but it was more than would usually be expected on a Wednesday night.

After that Dan and I got rolling drunk with Kimberley (who took to smothering me in her enormous bosom every thirty seconds) and everyone else in the bar. There were, as it turned out, quite a few people who were writing musicals or looking for singers, and they all gave me cards and took my email. The two girls took a moment to drag themselves from the sweaty-pawed clutches of their businessmen to tell me they ran a 'modelling agency' and to invite me to be one of their 'models'.

It was a brilliant night. On the way out the doorman gave us an umbrella and Kimberley extracted a promise that I go and sing there on a regular basis and whispered to me that she was actually a construction worker by trade.

The next day as I staggered around in a hungover mist like a drunken transvestite in four inch heels, I thought to myself that all of this studio stuff, all of this negotiating, worrying and writing, it is all just so that at some point in the future I will be able to stand up on stage every night and do what I love to do. I don't really care if it's to twenty people in a bar in Soho or fifty thousand in an enormous arena. I just love it, and it's the best fun in the world.

We had such a good day and evening, it was lovely to hang out with two of my best friends all day, and it's good to know that if there is a microphone around the place I will, at some point, almost certainly end up singing into it.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Singing, Sleeping, Eating and Drinking.

This is how my days are comprised at the moment. I get up at some point, go into the studio at some other point, come out, go back in, come out again and then, after sufficient time has passed to eat something or drink some wine or wonder whether anyone has texted me, I go back in again.

There is no schedule, there are no fixed hours.

Today I wrote a song in ten minutes then spent three hours thinking it was shit only to be frogmarched back in by my producer, re-record it and have to concede that it sounds alright now.

It is fair to say that my life is all turned upside down.

Also today I went to some charity shops in Eastbourne and purchased a (fake) fur stole, some shoes and a glitzy handbag, with a view to my costume for the weekend. I think the editor of the New York Times would have a glitzy handbag and a fur stole. I think someone named Busty LeRoux would have a cleavage-based outfit and some red lipstick, but luckily I am a brazen tart and have many varieties of both of those things. She would also wear shoes, and I have only the twelve million pairs to choose from so I was forced into buying some more, albeit for five quid from Help The Aged.

On Wednesday I am being thrust back into the company of people my own age and spending a Day Of Fun with two of my favourite people, Dan and Luke. I am not sure what we'll do, but I hope it will merit the use of capital letters. Day Of Fun. Day Of People Who Are Fun (And Me). Day Of Weekday Merriment. For Merriment Please Read Drunkeness. Brilliant.

I am going to go back now and re-listen to the new song and no doubt conclude it is rubbish, then go to bed in a haze of uncertainty, but looking forward to coming back to London.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Eastbourne Again

Debating about the nature of love! Makes for some quite interesting conversation, the like of which can usually only be found in halls of residences at five o'clock on a Wednesday morning being had by stoned, long-haired Philosophy students with artfully-positioned copies of The Koran on their bookshelves.

I was, I confess, a bit drunk when I wrote that last post. I thought to myself "maybe I shouldn't... no, fuck it" and wrote about My Heart And Soul, throwing caution to the wind. I was a bit cross, a bit upset, a bit pissed. Add that to having access to the Internet and it makes for a heady and not-necessarily-advisable combination. I did find it interesting to read the different responses, though.

It turns out that Love Is Not Massively Fathomable. That is my conclusion. I shall set about writing to my local Gazette at once.

I am in the studio again. I sit here next to the mixing desk and blog away whilst Ike does things I don't understand with buttons that all look the same and every so often I look up and say "That sounds good!" and get on with my Important Writing Shit On The Internet.

I exaggerate.

(Shocker)

We have been recording the first song I ever wrote, which is most gratifying. I remember writing it and thinking, bloody hell, this is rubbish. Now it is a whole song, with guitar and drums and backing vocals and possibly a cello part and it sounds considerably less rubbish. Almost, and I hesitate to say this, good. It is quite peculiar for me.

Now, I need some help. Next weekend I am going on a Murder Mystery Weekend. My friend has organised and written the whole thing. Eighteen of us are going to Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire to have dinner, stay the night and get horribly drunk whilst being in character and working out who is the murderer of the person who has been murdered. I absolutely LOVE this sort of thing, because I am a show-off and also dressing-up is one of my favourite things ever. Also Coombe Abbey is gorgeous and very fancy, and I do like things that are gorgeous and fancy, which is why I look in the mirror all the time.

Everyone else is shopping for their costumes this weekend. I cannot join them because a) I am in the studio and b) I do not possess any of that stuff that other people exchange for goods and services. I forget the name of it. Sex? Maybe.

I am going to tell you my character and you must come up with ideas of what I can wear. I want to look convincing, but also, because I am a stupid girl, nice and pretty.

Busty LeRoux
An obnoxious American who despises foreigners. Chief Editor of the New York Times.


(There is not a huge amount to go on.)

Also the weekend is set in the forties.

The key for this sort of thing is in the accessories, so think of good accessories for the character. I was thing long fake red fingernails, which actually negates what I just said about looking nice, but never mind. I was thinking I could drum them on stuff, tables, the bar, people's heads, whilst making sweeping statements about The French in a New York accent.

So, help me please. A hat? A cigarette holder? A vial of the blood of The Foreign?

Come on...

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Is it wrong

to want to be fought for?

To want to believe that I am worth putting up some resistance for?

I want someone who has the courage to want to sweep me off my feet and keep doing it, and who in turn inspires me to sweep me off theirs time and time again.

Everyone is afraid.

I want someone who isn't afraid of being afraid.

Someone who can, and will, fight for me. Who isn't a coward.

I am terrified that lack of cowardice is too much to ask.

Because I can't want anything less, not really.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Home (UPDATED)

Now I am home. Back where it is warm, where there is food in the fridge and carpets that haven't been walked on by hundreds of strangers from the past with verrucas.

Yesterday, at about nine-thirty pm, I took a last cursory glance in all the rooms in the flat to check that they were clean, and also that none of us had left anything tremendously embarrassing behind that would have to be collected at a later date (vibrator in the desk drawer? Lucky I checked.) (Lucky it was my drawer.)

I stood at my window for a bit, trying not to breathe on the freshly-polished glass, and tried to commit the room to memory. It has struck me a few times that, by leaving the flat, I am leaving behind so many memories that begin and end in those the chipped floorboard-ed, bright pink curtain-ed, mouse-ridden confines. I did like it there. The parties, the over-enthusiastic singing along to the Power Ballads CD whilst washing up, the even-more-enthusiastic singing along to the Power Ballads CD whilst simply dancing crazy-like around the living room, the rumbling of the trains as they trundled by about ten metres from the window. Waving to the Eurostar as it went by, hoping it would take my wave along to Paris for my Impish Little Sister, Railway Children-style.

My life has undergone a rather dramatic and sudden re-shuffle in the last three weeks.

Sudden. No job, no flat, no boyfriend.

Written out like that it seems rather more stark than it actually is.

I may have no nine-to-five, but I have the smallest buddings of a career.

I may have no flat, but I have a home not so far from London.

As for the third thing, I am not sure yet. It is, however, what it is, and the only thing I can do is live through it.

Today I am unpacking, which involves finding space for things I should have maybe thrown away and wondering whether I really might have needed all the things I threw away last week. I am aching and sore from carrying the rest of my stuff back from Clapham yesterday (two large rucksacks, a large hold-all and a keyboard stand) and my head is slightly fuzzy from inhaling about six litres of Pledge.

I am happy to be home.

I'm off to gaze in wonder at the glorious contents of the fridge.

UPDATE:

I keep finding write-ups of that 'blogmeet' I went to the other week, as I haven't been reading blogs quite as often as I'd like now that I'm not being paid to pretend I'm doing something else. Not out of lack of interest, you understand.
Anyway, what a nice thing to find written about me when I'm feeling a somewhat low and in need of ponies (from Mike of Troubled Diva):

"...we didn't really get past the nodding and smiling stage. She really is a very lovely looking lady, though. Is it OK to say that? Well, she is, dammit! I'm a big old poof-arse, I can say these things."

Yes, he can say these things, and I shall not stop him.

I knew blogging was all about how you looked.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Internet Café Post

I am rattling around an empty flat. More specifically I am in an internet café, as I had to pop in to defend my musical choices the other day.

Sister Act 2 (Back In The Habit) is quality viewing, and way better than Sister Act 1. If you haven't seen it you mustn't judge, and if you have and are still judging you are clearly a philistine and must get out more at once.

The next CD I listened to, if you must know, was Feist, which is marginally cooler than Sister Act 2 (Back In The Habit), but has fewer opportunities to sing along with 'Oh Happy Day' like you really, really mean it.

My flat is empty. My Dad came to take all my stuff away, a process not helped by the fact that, shortly after I wrote the last post I gave up on the dusting-and-packing and went out with my Impish Little Sister Sophie and others. Until seven the next morning. I leapt, startled, out of bed about an hour before my Dad got there yesterday and realised that, although I really thought I was packing diligently the day before, what I had really been doing was writing about packing diligently on the Internet which, it may surprise you to find out, is not quite the same thing. Much panic ensued, and much was binned in frantic and hungover haste. Luckily my housemate David is a considerably better person than I am and lent me some large bags and his ability to make things neat.

It is strange to be moving out of there. It is only when faced with actually leaving that I realise how many memories belong there.

Onwards, I suppose.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Packing, Dusting and Singing.

I'm just arranging all my stuff in my flat so that it is all boxed up by the time my Dad comes to help me take it home. I am under strict instructions to do a good job of this so that he doesn't arrive and I am standing amid a mountain of bin liners packed too full of clothes, shoes and 'interesting things from charity shops', a la every single time I came home from University. The day of moving out of halls at the end of each term was a particularly hellish one for everyone involved, bin liners splitting everywhere, crumpled 'Trainspotting' posters all over the place, all mixed in with a horrible hangover and the sneaking guilt of snogging your best-friend's boyfriend.

Anyway, I am being very good, what with being grown up now. I have thrown half of my stuff away to avoid packing it, I am dusting everything carefully before it goes in the box, and I have hardly snogged anyone since I started.

I have chosen good 'doing things to' music (not like that, don't be dirty) (oh, go on then). So far I have listened to the Sister Act 2 (Back in the Habit) soundtrack and Skunk Anansie 'Stoosh', both of which make for some very enthusiastic and loud singing along. Electic, perhaps, but both quality albums and I won't hear a word against either one.

Tonight I am going out to meet my Impish Little Sister Sophie, who is back from Paris for a bit, which will be wonderful.

Now I must select another CD to listen to so I can really finish off the job of bursting my neighbours' eardrums.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

It's Drizzling, and

I'm still in Eastbourne, at the studio.

We've done another song, I have written two more, and I am feeling very, very detached from the world I am used to. The world of social whirlwinds and pretending I can live in the same timescale as my friends.

I have been in the studio and then in the pub, then back to the studio. Every so often I worry that while I am here everyone else is forgetting about me.

I feel isolated, but somehow fulfilled.

There is something that tells me "this is who you are, isolated and slightly lost" and, in a peculiar way, that comforts me.

Perhaps it's true.

Maybe I want that to be true.

I think I want isolation because it absolves me from feeling responsiblity towards anyone who preferred me when I was someone who had passion without direction, songs without the means for singing them.

Maybe I am too self-involved, maybe I am just about self-involved enough.

Who the fuck knows?

I don't know. I think I don't really want to know.

Monday, November 06, 2006

I Am The Following:

-In Eastbourne.

-The proud owner of two post-break up songs, one of which is, rather inexplicably, about sandwiches and therefore might not be used on the album. Also because it is only ten words long.

-Absolutely fine.

-Overwhelmed by all the people I met on Saturday. I did my usual amount of talkingtoomuchbecauseI'mnervousandifIjustkeepgoingImight-
eventuallysaysomethingcleverorpertinenteventhoughhistoryhastaughtmethat-Iprobablywon't, and met some amazing people.

When I see a large group of people I always find myself wondering how that group know each other. They're family, maybe, or perhaps they're having a University reunion. A Lloyd-Webber appreciation society, perhaps (you can tell because of the higher-than-average number of hearing aids and gormless expressions).

On Saturday I wondered whether anyone else in the pub had at any point wondered to themselves how we were all connected. If they had overheard conversations they might have guessed by the fact that everyone had two names ("Léonie. From Sometimes Funny Is All I Have") (How I wished I had named my blog something different. "Never Funny, Honest, You Won't Have Read It" somehow felt much more appropriate) or maybe if they had caught my only-two-glasses-of-wine confession to someone that I had read her whole blog from top to bottom like a massive loser, they might have figured out that we weren't just people who at one time or other had worked in the same branch of Dixons.

I had brilliant time. I was very relieved to leave before I got even more drunk than I was, because I was teetering dangerously close to the edge of telling all my secrets, and in fact did tell one to one person, who I will be paying a fiver a year to as long as she keeps it all to herself.

I really am fine, as well. Thank you for shoe/compliment/hug-related comments, I appreciate it.

For the next few days I will be in the studio recording more songs. Not, I suspect the one about sandwiches, although there is something distinctly catchy about it.

(Wanders off singing, idly.)

("O, love you are fickle,
Like ham, cheese and pickle...")

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Oh, Again

Alternative titles for this post:

All My Relationships Go To Shit

How Come I Always Fuck It Up?

This Time It Really Hurts

So, yes, if you need me I'll be drinking myself into oblivion.