Packing

Two hundred and twenty-four party dresses. Six million pairs of stilletos and three pairs of flip flops. An over-sized hat and two small bikinis made of string and brightly-coloured triangles.

Lots of suncream.

Passport.

We are going on holiday tomorrow morning. Holiday! Tomorrow! Morning! Our flight leaves at just before six tomorrow morning, and tonight we're having celebration drinks to make the getting-up-in-the-grim-dark experience even more joyful.

Last night was filled with pink Champagne for no reason and lots of ironing. All my clothes are laid out carefully, ready to be rolled and squashed into a suitcase until they are dusted off again at the other end and re-ironed.

We are going here.

(Now would be a really bad time to develop a Portuguese stalker.)

Ten days stretch luxuriously out in front of me. Ten glorious days of sun and surfing, of getting up late and hanging out with friends all day. Of no temping, of no Luton. Of gin and tonics and barbeques and no grey drizzle misting up the gloomy early morning train. No filing, and therefore considerably fewer papercuts. Just sunstreaming, sticky suncream and sand in between the pages of my book.

Just holiday.

When I get back I am going to see this lady at Shepherds Bush Empire, and then on to this festival the following day, so the fun will maintain momentum for a while.

Have fun while I'm away. My freckles and I will see you when I get back.

Tomorrow!

Cymru

It's nearly late on a Sunday night. I have to rise early to begin my final week of temping so I should go to bed. Instead, though, I sit at the computer thinking about the weekend just gone, and smile.

On Friday night I ironed things, watched Muriel's Wedding and sang along to the Abba-studded soundtrack. I cooked, I cleaned, I folded: performing uncharacteristically housewifely duties with only myself to impress.

On Saturday I made my way to Paddington station and boarded the eleven forty-five to Cardiff. A few hours later and I was sitting in a bar in the bay area, contendedly sipping a pint, in the company of this man. It was a warm and sunny day, and I felt warm and sunny myself.

The rest of the weekend passed in a blur of pubs, parties and people. Laughter, words spilling and tumbling out, statues in the park and leaning on railings watching swans slide by and herons carefully place their spindly feet. Cardiff was full of sunshine. I ate two Magnums without a care in the world.

Time flowed by like cool silk and soon I was sitting on the train coming home again. I chatted to the girl sitting opposite me for a while after she had offered me one of her biscuits, but spent most of the journey gazing out of the window, happy to float in hazy daydreams.

I am home again, and it is nearly late. The frustrations of last week seem to have ebbed away and I feel hopeful, and ready to take on the world. Infused with some indescribable knowledge that everything will be alright in the end.

UPDATE: Does anyone know of any good hostels in Lisbon?

Frustration.

I have been struggling to find something to write. Apart from the obvious fact that there really isn't much that can top the acquisition of two new pairs of shoes, I just don't feel that there is anything in my life worth documenting.

(I suppose it is rather arrogant of me to assume that there ever was anything in my life worth documenting, but I overcame that particular mental hurdle two and a half years ago when I first began blogging my narcissistic little heart out from behind a dusty desk somewhere in Shoreditch.)

I feel like nothing is happening. I feel bored and frustrated, and sort of lonely. Not in an Anne Frank, there-are-people-around-me-but-somehow-I-feel-lost sort of a way, but in a more straightforward, where-the-hell-is-everybody way. I live too far from my friends, too removed from the social support networks to which (as it has been pointed out in the past) I so keenly cling. I find my life so frustrating, so tantalisingly almost-there, that on a day to day basis I feel like I want to jump out of a window, just to provoke some sort of change. I am, however, aware that self-defenestration would achieve little more than a broken leg and some crushed plantlife, so each day I bravely resist.

Next Saturday heralds change, in the shape of a holiday to Portugal. Eleven of us will blearily board an obscenely early EasyJet flight and head for a villa about forty kilometres from Lisbon, there to reside, sipping heady cocktails and lazing around in the pool for seven days. After that everyone goes home apart from Chris, Andy and I, who heading off for three days of sightseeing so that we can come back to the UK with at least some knowledge of the country whose gin supplies we have been depleting with such merry abandon for the last week.

I am very, very excited about the holiday, particularly due to the fact that it is the reason I have been so dedicated to my temping job for the last few months. I have bikinis and poolside wear all ready to go. I have been refusing biscuits and cakes for well over a month. I will be waxed and primped and preened like the finest show pony. I, to sum it up, am really fucking ready for this sodding holiday.

When I get back, I am going to the Latitude Festival, to which I have managed to secure a guest pass. Then maybe Edinburgh for the fringe. There has been talk of Paris. This gig and that gig, this collaboration and that one. All sorts of talk and so many plans for adventure, success and fun.

I just wish, sometimes, that I had something concrete. I know that I have made a choice that inevitably excludes certainty, and believe me when I say that the certainty of the nine-to-five is not what I crave. I would just like, for once, to be able to say yes, I am definitely doing that. Or yes, this thing definitely will happen.

Even when I read those words back I feel disappointed with myself for wanting such a mundane thing. I want immediately to write long, gushing assurances (mostly to myself) that desiring stability in some form does not negate the passion for which I would give up absolutely anything. I won't, though, because I already know it doesn't. I am just tired of spending so much time alone that the only reassurances I hear are my own. I only have a limited number of ways of phrasing them and I think they're beginning to sound tired.

I know it will all work out. I just wish I lived where I wanted to and felt part of something again. I feel so far away from everything. Frustrated, to put it mildly.

Impish Sophie Sister and I have been discussing a Top Secret Plan, which would involve us both moving far, far away for a bit. It is not yet certain, but is looking very, very appealing. It would end our frustrations without cutting short our musical aspirations. I have butterflies just thinking about it.

For now, though, I shall go off to watch some Charmed and make my bikini-countdown salad for tomorrow. Perhaps make a list or two or send an email. I will find something to achieve so that I won't wake tomorrow morning feeling that I let a day slip by without having made a stamp in it. Then I will sleep and dream of Top Secret Plans and diet-breaking chocolate cakes.

In Love Again

I have had a wonderful weekend. I want to write a big long post about it, but I am too tired at the moment and am overcome by an urge to go and watch Friends and eat cheese.

Part of my weekend wonderfulness was due to the purchasing of two new pairs of shoes, so I decided that before I wandered off to slump in front of the television stuffing my face with dairy, I would post some pictures of them.

The first are gold, and, if I am honest, a little on the snug side. They are, however, fabulous.

When I looked at the second pair I couldn't decide whether I loved them or hated them. I quickly discovered that I loved them with my whole heart, leaving worryingly little room for ponies and kittens and things.

I invite you to admire them, but you are not allowed to borrow them.

(Please excuse my grubby feet. This is what happens when you spend the day walking around grubby London in flip flops.)

Oh, Fickle Muse

I've been trying to write a song.

I was sitting day-dreamily in the fluorescent office today, idly moving bits of paper this way and that, when an idea landed. A song. I chased it and followed it, then wrote it down.

Upon arriving home I dashed upstairs to record it. I got the bit of paper with its pencil scribblings out and smoothed it in front of me. I opened my music software and turned on the microphone.

I pressed record, a flutter of excitement in my chest.

I started to sing.

I faltered, and stopped recording.

I had nothing.

Some words on some paper, some hastily scratched out staves littered with muddles of crochets and quavers, but no song. No sound. Nothing.

I tried again. I clicked open my iTunes for inspiration. I experimented with some bass sounds. I made some tea.

Nothing.

I suppose I am grateful that there seems to be an essence of an idea still there. I need to come up with something good to take to the studio when my producer gets back from his sunny honeymoon in a few weeks. I think he'll like this idea.

Tomorrow I will go back to the office and sit under the fluorescent lights obediently, waiting for inspiration to meander my way once more.

What It's All About

I've just got home from a gig. It's nearly two in the morning and I have Important Temping to attend to tomorrow, but instead of sleeping I have decided to upload a few photos from the gig tonight. It has been a brilliant night.

I will never, ever nevereverevernever (no never) become a recruitment consultant. Ha.






Narcissism bedamned. They're all of me.