You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2007.
1995 – On a school trip in Moscow, I stand in a gaggle of British school girls in Red Square at midnight, as our teachers try to fend off young Russian men proffering plastic cups of champagne. At midnight, revellers hurl firecrackers into the crowd, which we find thrilling, although in retrospect I marvel that nobody lost an eye.
1999 – Back home after my first term at university, I go to a warehouse party on the outskirts of Leeds with some friends from high school. I am the only person there not on drugs, and it is freezing cold and damp. I give up trying to pretend to have a good time at around one minute after midnight, and slump in a mouldy armchair. When we eventually leave, I locate my coat, and discover that somebody has vomited on it. It’s so cold I wear it anyway.
2000 – In California with my friend S, we drive up to Calaveras Big Trees State Park and spend the night in a cabin there with some of her college friends. We play Truth or Dare and watch the ball drop at midnight, even though with the time difference it actually dropped three hours earlier.
2001 – My friend L and I, bored at home over the Christmas holidays, decide to go back to university early, to get some work done on our dissertations. Her Dad gives us a lift to campus. Once there, we realise there are no buses or taxis running, and we are at least three miles from the nearest open bar. We are completely stranded, possibly the only two people on the whole darkened and deserted campus. At midnight we open my bedroom window and wave sparklers forlornly in the air. We are asleep by 12.30.
2002 – After a few desperate months in London, living in a hostel and trying to eat on less than £2 a day, I escape home to Yorkshire for Christmas and New Year. Simple things, like not having to share a bedroom with strangers, fill me with joy. Dad and I, neither of us party animals, go to bed at about 11.30 on New Year’s Eve. I fall asleep to the sound of fireworks echoing down the valley.
2003 – In Southampton, studying for my Master’s degree, I am invited to the New Year’s Eve party of my boss at the bookshop where I work part time. We play Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit and I flirt with a boy who I will end up dating for a couple of months. At midnight we spill out into the street and bang pots with wooden spoons.
2004 – The evening before, J and I had got together, and stayed up all night talking in that way that you do. Consequently, on New Year’s Eve, I can barely stay awake. My roommate L and I go out to dinner, and the plan is to go on to a party after, but I can’t face it. She goes to the party, I go home to bed. Fireworks wake me up, briefly, at midnight.
2005 – Back from Christmas at J’s parents, we can’t face socialising, so we use the fact that we just got cats (cats who might be afraid of loud noises) as an excuse to stay in and watch the New Year begin on the sofa. Big Ben bongs. The cats are unmoved.
2006 – In Austria on a skiing holiday, with exhausted and trembly legs, we lie in bed watching Austrian New Year’s revelries, which involve a startling amount of lederhosen and accordions. It’s all in German, so we’re not really sure what’s going on, but everybody seems to be enjoying themselves. At midnight they all dance around the television studio in a massive conga-line. We massage Deep Heat into our thighs, and switch off the TV.
2007 – Well, we’ll see I guess. Happy New Year to all!
Today I have been cleaning out my work bag. This is something I do once a year at around this time, and something I really should do more often, as evidenced by the amount of crap I have pulled out of it and put directly into the bin.
This is my work bag:
People are always teasing me because it is so big, and really, I admit, most days I don’t need anything so large. But I like carrying a big bag. What if I buy stuff while I’m out? Also it’s very useful for getting a seat on the tube, because I can use it to block off other commuters who are competing for the same seat as I am. Trust me, a bag this size is useful in London. You can use it to push tourists out of the way when you’re in a hurry. There is always room for an umbrella in it.
Besides an umbrella, I always carry around my diary, my keys, wallet, mobile phone, a book (sometimes two), business cards, Oyster card, a snack of some description, and a bottle of water. Those are the things I intentionally carry around in my work bag.
These are some of the things I really never knew I was carting all over London with me:
In one front pocket, a key to I do not know what, and a receipt for cat food. From September.
In the other front pocket: A cinema ticket and a sandwich reciept from August. Also:
A Weight Watchers points calculator. Incidentally, I am not on Weight Watchers.
Also discovered: A copy of a contract for work that was negotiated in April, a print-out of directions to a training course I attended in September, and a Take That CD.
Please, reassure me that I am not the only one giving herself early-onset back problems by carrying around a load of needless junk day after day (OK so the receipts don’t weigh all that much, but that key is heavy). What random crap are you carrying around in your bag?
Happy Christmas! to those who celebrate it, and Happy Tuesday! to everybody else. I have briefly escaped from the family revelry. So far it has not been too bad, apart from the horrifying moment when I realised that J’s ageing aunt had been left in front of the TV while a Ricky Gervais DVD was playing, and she was sitting, staring stonily at the screen, while he told the very funny story about a man who got a ketchup bottle stuck up his arse during some sexual misadventure. I ran in there and turned the telly off but I think the damage may have been done…
But apart from that all has been well, and I have scored some good presents. J proved that he is no fool and that a man can never go wrong with Tiffany, because I got a diamond bracelet, which matches the diamond earrings he got me last year and the necklace from the year before. Clever boy. But, he also proved that he knows me and my love of all things American and junky, because, look:
Fluff! In Both Colours! Win.
All the joys of the season to you and yours.
Sorry for the dearth of posts this week, things have been manic around here. Somehow we got ahead of ourselves and have redecorated our bedroom way before we expected to. We hadn’t planned on getting it finished until January, but then the carpet place had an off-cut of exactly the carpet we wanted in exactly the right size, and the furniture people said they could deliver before Christmas, and it all seemed too good to be true, and yet, we now have a new bedroom.
Of course, we didn’t get the new bedroom without a considerable amount of chaos, culminating yesterday when I had to do a mad dash into central London to buy new bedding because our new bed is a king-size and all our old bedding was made to fit a double. I think I took at least six old ladies out barging my way through a department store during the Christmas rush with two enormous bags full of bedding, including a king-size duvet and four pillows.
Meanwhile back at the flat J was supervising the laying of the new carpet. If by supervising you mean, playing on the PlayStation in another room. And just after the carpet fitter left the electricians turned up to fit a new fan in the bathroom. And then the furniture arrived, and turned out, unexpectedly, to involve self-assembly. And just as we were getting stuck into that, the people who had arranged to pick up our old bedroom furniture (thankyou Freecycle) showed up.
Long story short, we eventually went to bed, in our new bed, and slept the sleep of the just. And this morning J had to drive to the municipal dump to get rid of eleven sacks of packaging material from the bedroom furniture. I hang my head in environmental shame.
I have spent all day today cleaning and tidying the flat. My Mum arrives this afternoon and J’s entire family are getting here tomorrow. So, see you on the other side of Christmas I expect. I don’t anticipate being permitted another chance to sit down at the computer when there is small talk to be made and long stories about golf to be listened to. Roll on December 27th! Happy Christmas, all.
And I leave you with this, the reassuring evidence that the new bedroom is cat approved:
I was 9, and I watched it on the news with my parents, but I didn’t really understand what was going on, or why everybody cared about some wall. A boy in my class at school had gone to Germany with his Dad to see the wall coming down, and he brought a piece of it back. It was a lump of concrete that fit in the palm of your hand, with a tiny streak of red graffiti paint on one side.
I was 16, it was a Sunday morning, and my Mum came into my room and told me Princess Diana had been killed. I muttered something and tried to go back to sleep, but Mum was really upset about it so we put the telly on in my room and sat in my bed watching the news. I noticed that the BBC had changed the little information bar across the bottom of the screen to black. It was normally red.
September 11th 2001
I was 20, and it was the summer holidays before my last year of university. I had a driving lesson that day, and I spent a frustrating hour completely failing to reverse into a parking space, and trying not to cry about it in front of my teacher. After he dropped me off I walked over to the bookshop where I had once had a Saturday job, to pick up a book I’d ordered, and the woman who worked there told me there had been a terrible accident and a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre. I went home and put the TV on, thinking I could find out what happened when the news came on. I was quite surprised to see that regular programming had been stopped and that events in New York were being covered in real time. And then I watched it all happen, live. I ended up spending the whole afternoon sitting on the floor in the living room not quite believing what I was seeing.
I was 24, and had come into work early that morning because my office had flexi-time and I wanted to leave early that day. So I was already at my desk when the bombs went off at ten to nine. By about 9.30 it began to dawn on me that I could hear an awful lot of sirens outside, and that hardly anybody else was in the office. I went to check the BBC website to see what was going on but it wouldn’t load, and then I tried calling my flatmate but I couldn’t get an outside line. A coworker and I went to find a TV somewhere in the office, and that was when we found out about the bombs. I ended up walking home (about ten miles, and it was unusually hot) because all the public transport had been shut down. All over London, everybody else was walking too. It was a curiously calm and relaxed atmosphere.
Where were you?
I have been tidying the spare room today and I’ve come across a box of my old journals, so naturally all housework has gone on hold while I wallow in some ancient angst. I’m so glad that I can find it all hysterically funny now, or at least, it’s funny once I stop cringing. This entry, from March 2002 (not that long ago, shamingly) actually made me laugh out loud at my own immense ridiculousness:
Primer: it’s my last year of university, and I have been dating A (a colossal bastard, it turned out) for about four months:
I really missed A all day. He had gone home for a funeral and normally I wouldn’t mind not seeing him for a day but I haven’t actually seen him since Sunday and I really miss him. I texted him yesterday afternoon and told him I was thinking about him and missed him. I hope I didn’t seem too clingy, but I wanted to say what I felt.
This morning I woke up at 9.30 (9.30! Those were the days) and pottered about until it was time to go to Creative Writing. I knew A would be on the train back to Lancaster already so I texted him to say good morning. I also said ‘I haven’t seen you in ages and I don’t like it.’ Which was true but again, I hope not too clingy. When I got back from class I had a message from A saying to call him after 4 when he was done with classes. I knew I’d be in Crime Fiction by then though.
After class I walked down to Teabelly’s to take back the clothes I mended for her. I met her friend M for the first time which was interesting because I reckon he and Teabelly are going to end up together. (HAH! They totally did too!) I tried calling A from Teabelly’s room, since I was already in Fylde so I could easily have walked down to Pendle. He wasn’t in his room even though it was after 5. I tried his mobile too and he didn’t answer so I assume he must have been playing squash since that’s the only circumstance under which he wouldn’t answer his mobile.
Then, later on that day:
I am feeling very down and anxious. I finally managed to speak to A at around 7 this evening and I feel like he’s avoiding me. (NO WONDER you crazy drama lady!) He said he was going out into town and then the Sugarhouse (local club) tonight. I asked if I could come too but he said that his friend Ben has just broken up with his girlfriend so probably won’t want to see a couple. I guess I can understand that but my paranoia made me wonder if that was just an excuse. What hurt most though was that I told him I wanted to see him and that I really miss him, and he didn’t say it back. He just said ‘well it’s only been 6 days’ and I said ‘yes I know, but we normally see a lot more of each other’ and he said something like ‘well, there’ve been reasons.’ I hope he didn’t think I was being selfish because I do understand he has an awful lot going on. I guess I’m just disappointed that he didn’t give any indication that he would have liked to see me, had he not been so busy. When he sounded so upset about the funeral I asked if there was anything I could do and he hesitated for a really long time before saying ‘no’. I really hope he wasn’t going to say ‘give me some space’. Sigh. I hate to say this but I really hope he comes round drunk at 3 am to see me. I really need to hear him say ‘I love you’ even drunkenly.
Aaaargh. I have to pretend that this is someone else writing or I cringe so badly I feel a bit sick. Isn’t it dreadful? Wasn’t I horribly clingy (despite saying repeatedly that I hoped I wasn’t)? Also, he was totally giving me the brush off with that ‘my friend won’t want to see a couple’ line. I can see that now, but at the time I couldn’t bear to believe it. Are you all wondering what happened next? Did he come over drunk? Was he avoiding me?
Well, the next day:
It is 10.15 am as I write and A is lying in my bed trying to distract me. I was worrying about nothing last night as I suspected. At around 10.45 pm he texted me from town saying he wasn’t going on to the Sugarhouse and he wanted to come over if I didn’t mind him being a bit drunk. I wrote back saying I’d love to see him. I was so happy!
Ahhh! A happy ending! Although of course it all went to shit in the end, and there was plenty more angst and drama and ‘I hope I didn’t seem clingy’-ing to come. But, I have had all the shame I can take for today. On with the housework!
I am starting to feel really properly Christmasy now. I finished work on Friday (hurrah) and last night my friend L and I indulged in our own little festive tradition – going to see The Snowman at Sadler’s Wells. It’s a dance based on the book by Raymond Briggs, and we go every year, because even though the audience is full of under-fives waving The-Snowman-themed glow sticks, it’s still a lovely magical thing. Especially because whoever adapted it for the stage decided to add in random not-even-remotely-hinted-at-in-the-book dance sequences, the best of which involves a dancing coconut and pineapple doing the limbo, which always reduces us to hysterics. It is genius, I tell you.
Despite having been on holiday for three whole days now, I haven’t really managed to get in any decent lying around yet. Our bedroom is still being decorated and our decorator, whilst both lovely and skilled, is incapable of leaving you in peace if you’re in the house with him. After an hour or so of making small talk this morning I escaped for a walk, and walked so far that I ended up in Hammersmith doing impromptu Christmas shopping.
My Christmas shopping is pretty much finished, apart from J’s Dad, who every year gives me grief because he is utterly impossible to buy for. Even J’s Mum, who has been married to the man for over 40 years, can’t think of anything to give him. This year she just took him into a bookshop, had him pick out some books he liked, and then took them from him and gift-wrapped them. I genuinely despair.
So, I wandered round Hammersmith for an hour or so and utterly failed to find anything that J’s Dad might like, but picked up some bits and pieces for other people. And now I am back at home trying to avoid talking to the decorator and feeling dispirited about the fact that every room in the flat needs cleaning, badly. And this weekend all manner of relatives will be descending upon us, several of whom are the sort to notice if the coffee table is a bit dusty, which means I’m going to have to make damn sure it’s not. Sigh. What was that about feeling Christmasy again? I had better go and find myself a mince pie before I lose all my festive spirit.
My Google search stats, when they are not preoccupied with gym knickers (which is not that often I have to say) have started to reflect a general concern with matters of protocol in London. I find this very odd. But every day, pretty much, I get something along the lines of ‘unspoken rules in London’ or ‘London rules’. Now I know we Brits have a bit of a reputation for being very polite and stiff-upper-lippy and more-tea-vicarish and so on, but really, London is not like some secret society or anything. There is no handshake, I promise!
I read in a guidebook to Britain once the dire warning that ‘you must never ask a British person where they’re from, as this is considered incredibly rude’. And on behalf of my country people, I would like to say, this is absolute nonsense. We won’t think you’re rude if you ask us where we’re from. We might think you’re a little odd, if you just come up to us and say ‘hey, you, where are you from?’ but that’s probably true anywhere.
If you want to know about unspoken rules, go to Austria. J and I got into so much trouble when we went there last year, and innocently sat at a spare table for dinner in the hotel restaurant. Because, turns out, in Austrian hotels, you get assigned seating, although nobody tells you this. You are just supposed to know. And we sat at a table that was not assigned to us, and when the woman who had been assigned to that table arrived for dinner, she insisted we move, in the middle of our soup course, and nobody else thought that this was at all bizarre or rude. So, this is my tip for you: If you go to Austria, find out which table you’re supposed to sit at for dinner, and don’t dare stray from it.
But in London? In London you can sit wherever the hell you want. I have been wracking my brains for days and I really can’t think of any unspoken London rules. Apart from the tube rules obviously. If you break those then we will wish pain and suffering upon you, your family, and your pets. We’re serious. Don’t mess with Londoners on the tube. But above ground, everything’s a lot more civilised.
Nevertheless, in my mission to satisfy as many of the Google wanderers who stray over here as possible (With the caveat that if it squicks me out, I’m not doing it. I’m looking at you, gym knicker obsessives.) I have thought of two London rules. (Only two! And I’ve been thinking about this all week!) But honestly they are not even really rules, more like guidelines. And if you break any of them, nobody will really care.
Rule 1
Carry an umbrella with you. Honestly. Even if it’s the middle of August and it’s boiling hot (hint: it is rarely boiling hot) and there isn’t a cloud in the sky (hint: again, rare). There is still a good chance that you will get rained on at some point during the day. To say London is a rainy city is to flirt with the very extremes of understatement. London is a rainy city in the same way that hurricanes are a bit windy. When you come here, you will get rained on. I bet you a fiver.
Rule 2
No we don’t know your friend Bob. London is a big place; the population is 11 million. That’s more than half the size of the entire population of Australia, in one city! We don’t all know each other. Also, it’s crowded here. If you must go to Oxford Street or Knighstbridge, please don’t walk slowly, stop suddenly and inexplicably, or walk four-a-breast so nobody can overtake you.
And that’s it! Come to London! It is so laid back it’s practically horizontal! But don’t forget your umbrella. I wasn’t kidding about that.
We are having our bedroom painted at the moment, which means we are currently sleeping in the spare room. The spare room is where the cat-flap is, and also, where the cats’ litter tray usually is, but we have moved it to the study since, you know, not big fans of sleeping in the same room as cat shit.
Anyway, last night, I was just drifting off to sleep (J was at the pub with a friend), Milly was chilling on the windowsill and Molly had popped outside for a bit of a prowl. So, there I was, happily dreaming of lovely things, when I was brutally awoken by the most ear-splitting feline yowling and screaming, and two seconds later Molly burst through the cat-flap, tail three times its normal size, and pelted through the flat like she was on fire. Seconds after that, she scampered back into the spare room and over to where the litter tray normally is, but where it currently wasn’t, because we’d moved it to the study. And then we had the following conversation*:
Molly: (Wild, staring eyes) Where is the litter tray? WHERE IS THE LITTER TRAY?!
Me: Oh, the litter tray, we moved it. Here I’ll take you.
I scoop Molly up, carry her to the study, and plonk her in the tray.
Molly: Oh sweet mother of God that’s good.
Repellent stench fills study.
Me: Molly, did you actually just literally shit yourself from fear?
Molly: What? No! I needed to go. It wasn’t fear. I was not afraid.
Me: So what was that outside? Did you not just seriously lose a fight with a neighbourhood cat?
Molly: (Nonchalantly licking random bit of fur) I did not lose, it was a tactical retreat.
Me: Right…
Molly: I’m going to bed.
Me: Fine. Come on, we’re sleeping in the spare room tonight.
I scoop Molly up again, and carry her back into the spare room.
Molly: (struggling in my arms like I am carrying her to a boiling vat) What? THE SPARE ROOM? I cannot go in there! I CANNOT GO IN THERE EVER AGAIN FOR IT CONTAINS THE PORTAL OF DOOM!
Me: Portal of what? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a cat-flap. I won’t let the scary neighbourhood cat come through it I promise.
Molly: What good are you, puny human? You didn’t see it! It was a BEAST! A BEAST I TELL YOU! I am going to hide under the sofa. Possibly for the rest of my life.
Me: Fine. Coward.
Molly disappears, I go back to bed.
Then, ten minutes later.
Molly: Mummy?**
Me: Mmmmmf? What?
Molly:Mummy. Can I sleep with you tonight? Like, on you? I don’t feel safe. The beast is OUT THERE.
Me: Fine. But no loud purring.
Half an hour later, J comes home.
Molly: DADDY DADDY DADDY THERE WAS A BEAST! AND I KILLED IT! FOR I AM THE BRAVE, NOBLE AND FEARLESS MOLLY-THE-CAT. Stroke me. I deserve the strokes of the just.
J: ?
Me: Molly had a fight with a neighbourhood cat. She crapped herself and then came crying to me. I think she’s recovered now.
Molly: Shut it you. I never liked you much anyway. HI DADDY!
*I don’t actually have a talking cat. But she’s very expressive.
** Yes we are the cats’ Mummy and Daddy. Yes this makes us fully deserving of ridicule. Please, feel free.
So, my friend K and I went to see Take That on Saturday night at the O2 (formerly the Millennium Dome) and it was BRILLIANT. I have never screamed so much in my life.
We arrived really really early because the tickets said 6.30 but the website said 6.00 so we thought we should err on the side of caution and got there at 5.30. HAH! The doors actually opened at 6.30, the first support act started at 7.00 and the boys didn’t take the stage until 9.00!
But, it was worth getting there early, because we got to see the bizarre first support act, who was so bad she could have just been an audience member who decided to get up on stage for a bit of a singsong. She was wearing an ill-advised sequined black strapless jumpsuit (what a horrifying combination of words) and she began all her songs with a little synopsis. Some of which I preserve here for posterity:
This is a song about my former drummer, who I started seeing, but he didn’t tell me he was married.
This is a song about a woman who goes to a fertility clinic to get pregnant because she can’t find a decent man.
This is a song about en ex of mine who ended up marrying an air hostess and when she gave birth to their first child he sent me a text message telling me about it. It’s called ‘Too Much Information’. (This song, incidentally, accompanied by two dancers in air-hostess uniforms doing rocking-the-baby actions.)
Her lyrics were pretty genius too. One of them was ‘This isn’t Mansfield Park. She doesn’t have a big dowry.’ Which, you know, thanks for clearing that up, because I was sitting here wondering if this random song about a woman having a test tube baby was an Austen novel. What?
ANYWAY, after her we got Sophie Ellis Bextor, whose songs have always annoyed me on the radio but she was quite good live. So we sat and ate chips and listened to her for half an hour. And then, eventually, finally, it was the main act.
I should mention that while these support acts had been going on, the O2 was gradually filling to its 23,000-person capacity. Almost all of them were female. Almost all of them were shrieky. And by the time Sophie Ellis Bextor had finished they were shrieking at every possible tiny slight indication that Take That might be about to start – The lights got dim! SHRIEK! The song finished! SHRIEK! etc. We began to realise we were in for quite a loud night.
We had seats just to the left of the stage. It was a pretty great view, although sideways-on most of the time. But it meant we could see the boys crouching behind these podium things which they were about to burst out of when the music started, so yay! OMG A TAKE THAT KNEE! etc. But then, burst out they did, and the show started, and it was SPECTACULAR.
They sang all the best songs, including my absolute favourite – Never Forget - during which I seriously felt like I might actually BURST from joy. And they were all lovely and you could just tell they were enjoying the hell out of it, and they kept saying how grateful they were that their come-back has been a success and that their fans are still here and BLESS THEIR LITTLE THATTER HEARTS, basically.
One of the best things was that they have kept all the original dance routines for their old songs, which were, let’s face it, designed with a teenage fanbase in mind and are therefore DEEPLY CHEESY. It was so funny to watch these men who are now in their mid-thirties, singing a lovely ballad like Pray and then suddenly start doing this LUDICROUS dance routine which looked like the choreography instructions were – wiggle one hand, waddle like a duck, put hands together as if in prayer, hop up and down on one leg, wiggle other hand, bend knee, touch head, aaaand, resume singing. HEE!
Anyway, we had a FANTASTIC night, and went home on the tube giddy with estrogen and endorphins. And if Take That ever come to London again we are GOING. And I highly recommend you all go too. The end.
